I hope you are enjoying spring (or fall?) right now. Hopefully, when you read this, I'll be in the garden, the woods, the pasture or the kitchen. I'm taking the rest of May off to recharge my batteries. The book tour for The Education of Will was a time I will never forget, full of inspiration and passion and commitment and love. I am overwhelmed with gratitude about the reception of the book--thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of you who have responded to my memoir with such grace and support. I find, however, that I am spent. Taking my own advice (always the hardest advice to take, yes?), I will be recharging my batteries for the rest of May. I'll still read and post your comments, and cherish them as always, but please forgive me for only commenting on occasion until I Read More
HAI. The Window of Tolerance. And Life.
I'm sitting at La Guardia airport, surrounded by rows of passengers-to-be, their stolid baggage waiting by their sides like silent beasts of burden, their agile mobile phones hard at work. I'm on my way home from the Green Chimneys 2017 Conference on Human Animal Interactions and here's my challenge: What part of the conference do I write about? The amazing work being done at Green Chimneys, a pioneer in animal and nature-based therapy for children with special needs?? The informative and inspiring talk by Dr. Sandra McCune of the Waltham Foundation, about the human-animal bond and the growing field of Human-Animal Interactions (HAI). Or should I focus on one of HAI's rising stars, Dr. Maggie O'Haire from Purdue University's Center for the Human Animal Bond, her research on HAI impacts on Read More
Sorry to Say (Dogs and Guilt, Revisited)
There was quite the dust up on Twitter last week about a blog in Psychology Today by Nathan Lents, titled Dogs Apologize Better Than Some Humans. Skipping the observation that humans have a lot more to apologize for than dogs do, (clown horror movies come to mind), Lents addresses the "guilty look" of dogs and wolves. He argues that what people often interpret as a "guilty look" in dogs is the equivalent of an apology. He says: "A dog that bites too hard is punished by temporary shunning. They are removed from the social unit and ignored for a time. In order to be reintroduced, the offending wolf must approach with an apology bow and be re-admitted into the group." There's more. The quote that got him in the hottest of water was this: "In a sense, an apology is indeed an expression of Read More
Want a Laugh? “Peanut Butter Dogs” Guarantees It
The book Peanut Butter Dogs, Photographs by Greg Murray, is the best thing to cross my desk in ages. We now know that the ingredients for a giggling, smiling, heart-warming laugh fest are: 1. Dogs (80% of the dogs in the book were adopted from shelters or rescues). 2. Peanut butter. 3. A great photographer. The inspiration for this book came from Greg's dog Bailey, a Mastiff rescued from a tough life, underweight and frightened of the world. But Greg gave her love and care, and she lived a life of "joy and adventure" until her untimely death at two and a half years of age. While Bailey was alive, Greg happened to take an amusing photo of Bailey slurping peanut butter off of her face. An enlarged photograph of that image greets visitors to the house, each of whom begins smiling when they Read More
Why Don’t Dogs Get Angry More Often?
I've had a lot of interesting conversations on book tour for The Education of Will, and one of the topics that comes up relates to dogs and anger. I've heard: "Are you really saying that dogs can experience anger? Isn't that being anthropomorphic; surely anger is a human construct?" And from a few concerned people: "Aren't you afraid that attributing anger to dogs just gives people an excuse to punish them?" Good questions, and an understandable controversy. I've learned that even putting the words "anger" and "dogs" into one sentence can be distressing to some people. So much so that I've written about it twice in the past, once in 2008 (Can Dogs Get Angry?) and again in 2011 (Anger & Anger Management). To summarize those posts, in spite of our vision of dogs as having Read More
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