We're just back from a week in Jamaica. Good to go, good to be home. Usually winter trips around here are motivated by a desire to escape the cold. Not this time, I think it was in the 50's when we left. We basically had about two weeks of real winter--very cold, lots of snow--but before and after it's been like living in three month-long November, a month known for gray skies and lots of mud. Yuck. Because of that, it was still wonderful to get away, mostly to glory in bright colors-Turquoise! Orange! Green!, and to escape the relentless To Do list that exists for all of us. Mine is especially, uh, challenging now. Mix my Epstein Barr/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome with ADHD, and interesting things happen. I am grateful to my bones that we were able to get away. Here is the scene that Read More
Dark Eyes in Dogs, or Light? (& Other Preferences About Looks)
I just read a fascinating article in the Royal Society Open Journal finding that dark-eyed dogs were rated friendlier and less mature than light-eyed dogs by people viewing photos of just their eyes and muzzle. It included dogs of multiple breeds, whose images had eyes that had been both darkened and lightened (toward yellow, not blue as above) by the researchers. (If you're interested in the evolution of eyes in dogs and primates, in relation to social communication, you'd enjoy reading the entire article.) The authors, noting that wolves have yellow eyes while most domestic dogs have significantly darker eyes, speculate that selectionary pressures might account for the difference. Besides finding the article interesting in its own right, it got me thinking about preferences that Read More
How Dog Training and Editing are the Same.
Continuing my ability to relate just about everything in the world to dog training, I offer you some thoughts about how good editing is like good dog training. For example, here is a typical editing progression, starting with: "I really think that dog is too hot to keep working." Eeeps, delete the "really": "I think that dog is too hot to keep working." Still, too many words: "That dog is too hot to keep working." Better. You get the idea. Less is more. The word "really" adds nothing but noise. The concept "I think" is implied without it being stated. Who else is thinking it if you wrote it? You could even cut the sentence down to "That dog is too hot." (But, you have to leave in the "too," right?) No one says "less is better" than Sol Read More
2024: A Year of Delight in Small Things
First, and most importantly, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Of course, we all know, it's really just another day, the "year" concept being an arbitrary construction of our brain's need for order. But, hey: "Just another day?" Maybe there's no such thing. Not "just another day," but HOLY S___!, WE GET ANOTHER DAY!!!! 2023 has not been my best year. And yet, as I've said countless times, I'm not dead yet. I said that as a joke initially, but as time went on I learned to appreciate it for what it really is: A privilege and an honor to wake up every morning, in a life where I am not homeless, starving, or under siege. That's my commitment for the New Year, to savor and delight in all that I have. Not just today, or even every morning when I write in my gratitude journal, but moment by moment. I'm Read More
The 5 Things Our Dogs Want for the Holidays
While feeling a bit reflective, and thinking about what to write today, I went into the archives to see what I'd written this month ten years ago. I ran into this post, which I'd forgotten about, and decided it deserved to come out of moth balls, like some Christmas tree decorations stashed in the back of the closet. Here's what I wrote on December 23, 2013, slightly updated: Chew bones and tasty snacks are nice, but here is what I think our dogs really want for Christmas: 1. CLARITY: Our dogs are living with aliens–us. They may love us deeply, but they still spend much of their life confused. After all, dogs are living in a world in which we yell at them for eating poop, and then pick it up and hoard it ourselves. We have five synonyms for one command, change the rules day by Read More