Peace in the face of Oblivion

I often think of the wisdom of dogs. My eldest bitch is dying... well dying in the sense that her health is failing. Congestive heart failure... at a youngish age probably due to her spaniel heritage catching up with her. She feels fine currently. Medication controls much of the problem. but no mistake she is dying.
The problem presented with a cough that would not quit followed by collapsing when she came in from outside. Turns out she was fainting. She would wake confused but not distraught. The vet fixed the cough, and she will be a four pill a day dog from here on out.  Odds are however she will likely be dead within two years.
I am not going to do anything special other than dose her twice a day. She will live life as she always did, play with her toys, and chase her daughter and granddaughter. Live well without apology little dog and may the end be sudden and knowing love.

A tale of Liars, Lions, and the Mob

So it seems the world is still reeling about the tale of a lion being poached by a rich white trophy hunter.  Zimbabwe mourned a whole week before they reopened hunting. They also decided that it was not the dentist's fault for paying the permits in good faith and decided to not press charges. The camp seems to be widely divided on where their outrage lies - one group points to trophy hunting and screams of it's evils. Another points to the killing of a lion and says killing is evil as a lion somehow holds more value it seems than other animals or even poor people. To the mob slathering I simply say "the world is a complicated place" and nothing good comes of knee jerk judgement and a call to harm this man and his family.

A lion - even one with a cute name is not a pet. It is a wild animal with all the needs of food, water, and space. If you want to pretend to care about lions the last of these things - space is the greatest threat to their continued existence. The lion population is plummeting because of deliberate poison by encroaching civilization and fragmentation caused by the ever extending plague of impoverished humanity that needs to turn resources into prosperity in whatever way they can.

You cannot hope to save lions without saving people. People who don't have to worry about being eaten or attacked by lions are far more likely to accept lions being part of their world and be less apt to poison them for the slightest trespass against them.  This is a very expensive proposition to raise a people out of poverty without stripping the environment of it's resources. Americans couldn't do it. We drove the great predators to our boarders and stripped land of trees and minerals poisoning the water. It takes time to recover from that and only now have the grizzly bears, wolverines, and wolves began to expand into once held grounds and beyond through strict regulations on sustainable albeit controversial hunting.

There has to be a local reason to care, for lions to be saved. Right now the people of African nations have made it clear that where lions are without monetary value that there will be no lions.

So what in the crunch of time are a people to do?

One solution is to ban hunting. Sadly legal sport hunting often takes the brunt of environmental activism because it's the easiest and cheapest fruit to pick. Sadly making an animal worthless rather than worth something is a pretty poor way to incentivize a person to want to keep that pesky critter around. One environmental solution is to make lions and other wildlife valuable... crazy valuable. Regulate the gills out of it and use the money generated to protect more wildlife and enrich the lives of the people who live near them.

The other is to acknowledge that you have to not preach values without considering the lives of the  people who would have to live them.  The only species that seems to be able to rebound without hunting to raise their value are species where we don't compete for resources and space with - such as with the whaling ban which has to this point encouraged the recovery of baleen whales like the grey whale but seems to have been not as kind to the orca who still seems to struggle with depleted fish stocks and the amount of heavy metal waste that poisons them.

Service Dog Scams

So there is a lot of service dog scams out there both in terms of fakers faking and in terms of people taking advantage of the rubes. One of the biggest is with many of these private training agencies promising for tens of thousands of dollars to train a great service dog who will alert to allergens, function as a tie down for your autistic kid, completely mitigate a real disability, and predict lottery numbers to boot. Sadly for many most of these folks the story doesn't match the reality.

So to those in need of a service dog and somehow stumble across this blog I would implore you to stop and realistically consider what you need out of a service dog and come up with a realistic strategy on kicking the tires before paying someone a downpayment for a house to get a service dog.

You need an idea of what you truly need in a service dog. These will be your dog's tasks. You need to understand that while service dogs are great they are not magical, they are in fact trained animals. Some stay trained better than others. Some put up with unreasonable requests more so than others. You need to realize that there are far more organizations fully willing to take your money and supply you with a shoddy trained dog than organizations that are skilled enough and with enough record to produce dogs for any kind of money.

A service dog trainer should be able to supply references to dogs they have trained and people they have trained for. They should know how long their dogs stay working. They should have a plan for dogs that must be retired. They should know that dogs they place are healthy and will reasonably remain healthy. They should never promise more than they can train for, such as medical alert dogs. Most dogs will not obtain accurate seizure or diabetic alerts no matter how well they are trained.

A service dog should be able to be trained to tasks and then the program needs to devote time to train the handler to handle and upkeep the training of that dog. They will have a hard measure of success and should have ongoing support for handling. They will not promise the moon.They will give you a reasonable estimate of the time your dog will likely have before you have to seek a new dog. Service dogs sadly don't live forever and certainly can't work forever depending on their tasks.


Service dogs are not pets but they can retire to become pets. Far too many people forget that and let their dog's training go in leau of slacking on the couch or dog park.Far too few suppliers insist upon or supply ongoing training support.

Buyer beware, buyer beware, buyer beware. You are searching a market far too willing to take your money and deliver nothing with no repercussions to the contrary.