Our economic evolution into stray dogs.

[23]

This article got me thinking:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/628a8500-ff1c ... ab49a.html
Moscow’s stray dogs

“The second difference between stray dogs and wolves is that the dogs, on average, are much less aggressive and a good deal more tolerant of one another,” says Poyarkov. Wolves stay strictly within their own pack, even if they share a territory with another. A pack of dogs, however, can hold a dominant position over other packs and their leader will often “patrol” the other packs by moving in and out of them. His observations have led Poyarkov to conclude that this leader is not necessarily the strongest or most dominant dog, but the most intelligent – and is acknowledged as such. The pack depends on him for its survival.

Are we evolving into economic stray dogs so that we could learn: a) how to be more tolerant of each other, and; b) trust intelligent leaders more than dominant/strong ones?

[Maddy]

I loved that article. I was completely unaware of the dogs in Moscow! Definitely food for thought about adaptation for any species.

[Cordelia]

Just after reading this, I was sad to read about Casper, the London cat who rode the bus every day for four years. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... t-run.html

Prayers for feline & canine street savvy mass-transit riders, and in memory of Casper and Malchik.........

[§ê¢rꆧ]

Interesting.

“They orient themselves in a number of ways,” Neuronov adds. “They figure out where they are by smell, by recognising the name of the station from the recorded announcer’s voice and by time intervals. If, for example, you come every Monday and feed a dog, that dog will know when it’s Monday and the hour to expect you, based on their sense of time intervals from their biological clocks.”

That really impressed me. Being a cat person I always thought of cats as intelligent, and dogs as ... well, good companions.

[82_28]

Interesting.

“They orient themselves in a number of ways,” Neuronov adds. “They figure out where they are by smell, by recognising the name of the station from the recorded announcer’s voice and by time intervals. If, for example, you come every Monday and feed a dog, that dog will know when it’s Monday and the hour to expect you, based on their sense of time intervals from their biological clocks.”

That really impressed me. Being a cat person I always thought of cats as intelligent, and dogs as ... well, good companions.

I'm a cat and a dog person. Unfortunately no dogs live with me at this point, but I do have 4 cats. I really want an Australian Shepherd friend in my life again though. I had a mix of Aus Shep and sheltie growing up -- had to put her down a couple years ago sadly. Pet's lives are way too damned short!

Recently though, here is what has occurred to me about the domestication of cats and dogs and how they became our friends.

When I watch our cats out in the garden they seem to just be on a silent watch. Whether it be night or day, they keep an eye on invisible things. Things way beyond our perception. Perhaps, I wonder, scaring away, keeping watch over spirits. I'm thinking here, their ancient use, what they were looked at as, ala Egyptian lore etc.

Dogs are more physical and likewise seem to protect in the physical realm. They will defend a human friend to their death if they have to.

They seem to be a tandem team. Humans in the middle perhaps. Cats, dogs and humans all beings in our own right, all "domesticated" by something. Perhaps by each other (cats, dogs, humans). Because who really can say where any of us would be without cats, without dogs or without us humans typing away on RI? I imagine some awesome event many millennia ago that happened where either cats or dogs maybe saved our asses from not being who we are now and perhaps eventually created our religions.

Just speculation. Doing too much of that tonight I think.

And I think it just rules that the Muscovites want the stray packs to stay.

[23]

"When I watch our cats out in the garden they seem to just be on a silent watch. Whether it be night or day, they keep an eye on invisible things. Things way beyond our perception. Perhaps, I wonder, scaring away, keeping watch over spirits. I'm thinking here, their ancient use, what they were looked at as, ala Egyptian lore etc."

Their "silent watch", that you are observing, may be more of an absence of something than a seeing of invisible things.

Our pets don't spend their time thinking about or reliving things in the past or worrying about things in the future. They're here and now.

We, too, would be silently watching the here and now, just like they are... if we weren't so preoccupied with our thoughts of the past and future.

They don't, so much, see invisible things. They just see what we don't, the here and now... 'cause we're somewhere else.

[Cordelia]

I'm a cat and a dog person. Unfortunately no dogs live with me at this point, but I do have 4 cats. I really want an Australian Shepherd friend in my life again though. I had a mix of Aus Shep and sheltie growing up -- had to put her down a couple years ago sadly. Pet's lives are way too damned short!

Recently though, here is what has occurred to me about the domestication of cats and dogs and how they became our friends.

When I watch our cats out in the garden they seem to just be on a silent watch. Whether it be night or day, they keep an eye on invisible things. Things way beyond our perception. Perhaps, I wonder, scaring away, keeping watch over spirits. I'm thinking here, their ancient use, what they were looked at as, ala Egyptian lore etc.

Dogs are more physical and likewise seem to protect in the physical realm. They will defend a human friend to their death if they have to.

They seem to be a tandem team. Humans in the middle perhaps. Cats, dogs and humans all beings in our own right, all "domesticated" by something. Perhaps by each other (cats, dogs, humans). Because who really can say where any of us would be without cats, without dogs or without us humans typing away on RI? I imagine some awesome event many millennia ago that happened where either cats or dogs maybe saved our asses from not being who we are now and perhaps eventually created our religions.

Just speculation. Doing too much of that tonight I think.

And I think it just rules that the Muscovites want the stray packs to stay.

Thanks 82-08, this is a great interpretation! I think I'll print it out, gather up the six (how did that happen??!! four were enough) cats and three dogs who share the castle, and read it to them. I'm pretty sure they'll all understand, especially the cats.

23 wrote: "Our pets don't spend their time thinking about or reliving things in the past or worrying about things in the future. They're here and now."

I guess they're blessedly free of human egos. But they're also attuned to us in relation to routines. I remember a book I read years ago called 'Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home'. It was all about how perceptive dogs are of time and place. (The book was a bit of a slow read because of the author's need to back everything up with studies, and less with anecdotes, as I would have liked, but a lot of RI readers would probably appreciate the thoroughness of his fact checking.)

Their memories are why dogs are so easily conditioned, easy to train, dependable, and keenly aware of the past if the past included abuse. I'm reminded twice a day, through my Shepherd-Pit Bull mix, who was rescued starving, scarred from fights, and his teeth worn down to nubs, probably from trying to chew his way out of a kennel (he's terrified of them). Even though I've had him five years, and feed him twice a day, as close to clockwork as possible, he doesn't quite trust that he won't starve, and begins pacing well in advance of his meals. And he still flinches when I reach my hand to his head. If our hound, who was routinely abandoned and left alone for days at a time, suspects her human companions are leaving her, she begins shaking and gnawing on her feet. They still display their canine versions of PTSD. Now dogs too are prescribed anti-depressants. The third dog who lives here doesn't worry about anything; he's been well fed and cared for since he was a pup and now he knows he's a 140+ pound king of the world. And he should be. Animals rule.

(How did domesticated dogs evolve from wolves? Are there missing links, as with humans)

I don't understand how humans were appointed stewards of the planet. We've plundered and pillared.....

[Nordic]

Dogs are ridiculously intelligent in their own way. My old dogs could be dropped off, blindfolded, in any part of town, and find their way back. No kidding. I don't know how they do it. They can't read signs, or maps, or ask for directions.

I had a little dog once who was the smartest animal I've ever known. He had been a street dog in a bad neighborhood in Denver. Somehow we ended up with him, and this dog was so smart he would get himself in all kinds of trouble. He could figure out how to climb over, or under, just about anything.

He could climb over a six foot high fence, somehow, and chase my car down the street, if he wanted me to take him with me. One time, when he was first dropped off at our house, he managed to get out of our backyard, with its six foot fence, climb up on my buddy's volvo, and climb in through the open sunroof. So he was waiting in the car after we spent all kinds of time looking for him when he'd "disappeared".

Then, after a few days with us I guess he missed my friend and walked all across Denver, across several major boulevards with their killer traffic, and was back at my buddy's doorstep, happily greeting him. I have no idea how he figured that out. He'd only driven over to our house once, inside of a car!

When I lived in the Hollywood Hills this same dog, and my German Shephard mix, would sometimes escape from our yard and disappear into the hills. How they ever figured out how to get back was a mystery to me, the way the roads wind around there, up and down, no rhyme or reason -- hell, people get lost in those hills all the time.

My German Shephard mix could understand a lot of English, even stuff I'd never trained him to know. Sometimes I'd just say stuff to her, and she'd kinda shrug and go do it.

Then she'd gulp up raw horse shit if we came across some on a hiking trail. Yuck. Dogs.

I love dogs and wish I had one now.

[LilyPatToo]

Nearly 40 years ago, I had a small son who loved to sled-ride in the winter. And we lived way the heck out in the hill country in western PA, so he could sled to his heart's content. We also had a beautiful Lassie-type collie named "Sugar" who had decided when my son was an infant that he was her "designated sheep" who she would herd and protect as long as she lived. Unlike many collies, she came across as a gorgeous, affectionate dummy, but we loved her anyway.

Then one day my son decided to try sledding on The Forbidden Hill...it was extremely steep and ended at the road, so he and all the kids had been warned off it. I was keeping an eye on him and his friend from next door from my kitchen window when I heard crying and shouting. When I got to the door, I saw the 2 furious, red-faced little kids up at the very top of the hill, yelling at the collie, who'd lain down in front of their sleds and refused to move.

How the dog could possibly have understood the Forbidden Hill lecture my son got every time he left the house to sled in the winter, I'll never know. But she was crystal clear on the concept and nobody was going down that slope on her watch. When the kidlets sledded where they were supposed to, she raced beside them and shared in the excitement for hours at a stretch, so it wasn't any objection to sleds...she somehow knew that particular hill was off limits.

This is also the dog who, a few years before, had herded all the toddlers in the neighborhood (a Catholic neighborhood built around a circular street with at least a dozen babies at any given time and many of the back yards merging together in the center) into our yard and then proudly circled them to keep the herd together. If one tried to toddle off, she dashed over and gently body-bumped the offender onto his or her diapered bottom and nosed them back into the herd. Ever since, I've regretted not taking a photo, because the expression on Sugar's doggie face was pure, fulfilled herding dog's delight.

LilyPat

[23]

[Joe Hillshoist]

"When I watch our cats out in the garden they seem to just be on a silent watch. Whether it be night or day, they keep an eye on invisible things. Things way beyond our perception. Perhaps, I wonder, scaring away, keeping watch over spirits. I'm thinking here, their ancient use, what they were looked at as, ala Egyptian lore etc."

Their "silent watch", that you are observing, may be more of an absence of something than a seeing of invisible things.

Our pets don't spend their time thinking about or reliving things in the past or worrying about things in the future. They're here and now.

We, too, would be silently watching the here and now, just like they are... if we weren't so preoccupied with our thoughts of the past and future.

They don't, so much, see invisible things. They just see what we don't, the here and now... 'cause we're somewhere else.

The invisible things my cat watches are here and now.

Thats why he watches them.

[Joe Hillshoist]

My mate Marty the mad Irishman reckons he lived with a pack of dogs as a kid.

And any amount of other mad shit. (Being part of a race specially bred by Nazi's for their physical prowess for example - which is kind of odd cos he is built like a brick shithouse, and he is nearly 50, tho he has the body of a 20 year old and seems to do sweet fuck all in the way of exercise, and he goes on about a lot of the weirdness that gets mentioned here, tho i try not to mention it to him, cos he gets a bit excitable - and I want to hear what he says without contamination from me.)

Anyway he knows as much about dogs as anyone I have met (I know several people who breed dogs, both pedigree and pig hunting dogs, and everything in between), and he swears it is from his experience living with them.

This is his old site, which gives you a bit of an idea where he is coming from.

http://thedreadlockdogman.blogspot.com/

Here is his new site.

http://dreadlockdogmantv.blogspot.com/

Tho its basically an ad.

[Maddy]

Wow, I like him much better than the Dog Whisperer! He doesn't seem to have a vendetta out about Dominating Dogs! as if its something he Must Do! Then make you wonder if he dominates humans and his family the same way! I like his laid back style.

[82_28]

On Seeing Like a Cat:

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/08/06/on ... ike-a-cat/

[Cordelia]

I love dog stories (well, any animal stories); in addition to breeding, I think dogs 'sense' what their family expects of them. A couple of weeks after my ex abandoned our farm and animals, I adopted our Shepherd P.B. mix. At first, I thought I'd made a mistake; he was so large, I worried he was just too much dog for me, but he quickly settled in and I can't imagine life without him. The month after he arrived, my ex came over, at my request, to talk, and I was intentionally amicable and didn't communicate any hostility (I wanted the meeting to be strictly information gathering and not confrontational). When my ex's face shape shifted to reveal the psychopath he really is--he'd made no hostile or threatening gestures, but he became his 'real' self--my dog, who I didn't realize was even watching, suddenly snarled, reached over and grabbed his arm. He didn't miss a beat, he didn't bite him, and he settled right back down, but the message was clear. They're so attuned to body language, smells, sounds and probably other nuances we never pick up on.

(Nordic-my dogs don't eat horse shit, they roll in it. But, they do dine on fresh horse hoof clippings after the Ferrier's visited. And, our Mastiff cross can't walk past the cat litter boxes without sampling fresh delicacies. I agree, Yuck. Dawgs.)