What's in a name?

Every Sunday morning, I help JP with Koumis, his dog. We meet come rain or shine on a field surrounded by woodland. I was asked to meet Koumis because she pulled on the lead and she was too friendly with other dogs which did not please the other dogs’ owners and which made her pull even more. We do basic obedience exercises and Koumis is really responding fast. She is very receptive and keen to learn although it takes her 20 minutes or so before she starts concentrating. She is walking to heel on the lead without pulling even when there is another dog nearby. We have just started walking to heel off the lead and she is doing really well. We also let her run off the lead. She loves that because she feels free. She does not realise it’s an obedience exercise like any other. She’s off the lead so she has to come back when JP calls her. And she does. He just has to call her name twice and she comes back. She runs up to other dogs and comes back straightaway when called for. Mind you, we have not yet come across the cows which graze on the field! I am really pleased with her – she is 6 after all - and so is JP. Koumis was very suspicious of me at first and nervous around me. She would bite my ankles as sheepdogs do when rounding up sheep or cattle. But by projecting a calm energy, she accepted me. She is so pleased to see me every Sunday morning that she jumps up with her four paws off the ground. She has an unusual name and this is what JP’s wife has to say about it: “Notre chienne berger allemand de 6 ans s'appelle Koumis, nom d'une boisson très répandue et appréciée par les nomades d'Asie centrale et de Mongolie, soit du lait de jument fermenté faiblement alcoolisé. Nous lui avons donné ce nom en souvenir de nos voyages dans ces beaux pays ».
Koumis is pronounced ku-miss. JP and Koumis live in Brussels.

Swimming with dolphins

Researchers have found that swimming with dolphins appears to help alleviate mild to moderate depression. They say dolphins' friendly appearance and the emotions raised by the experience may have healing properties. Some have speculated that the ultrasound emitted by dolphins as part of their echolocation system may have a beneficial effect. Dolphins are highly intelligent animals who are capable of complex interactions, and regard humans positively. What about dogs?

Dogs die in hot car

Two police dogs died in the heatwave after being left in a car by their handler.
The German Shepherds, which had been donated to Nottinghamshire Police, were found dead outside the force's headquarters.
It is believed their handler was not on duty and called into the offices leaving the dogs to over-heat. It is unclear how long the animals had been left in the car in Sherwood Lodge, Arnold, on Tuesday where temperatures reached 28C. The RSPCA said temperatures inside the car could have been 47C.
The dogs were donated to carry out police work, including tracking down criminals and providing security. The Independent Police Complaints Commission said it received a referral from the force and is deciding whether to launch an inquiry. The RSPCA is investigating.
The maximum sentence for causing unnecessary suffering to an animal is six months in jail and a £20,000 fine.
The handler has not been suspended.

I will not say what I really feel about this but I must admit it is just unbelievable. Police dog handlers are trained to work with dogs, to live with dogs and to look after them. These dogs are highly trained and do fantastic work. They love their work and only do it to please their handler. That’s how a dog works. When you teach a dog anything from a simple trick such as responding to the command “sit” to retrieving game or finding drugs in suitcases or tracking for missing people or finding avalanche victims or guiding the blind, the dog does it to please his handler, the person he is working with and the person he trusts with his life.
As a dog trainer, I do warn people about leaving dogs in cars. I find it unacceptable that a person who has had training and whose job it to work with dogs, is guilty of negligence and unprofessional behaviour.

PS: I find it strange that this incident is not widely reported in the British press.

Medieval wall

All I know about this medieval wall is that it is located somewhere in Wales and that it looks like a dog.
Any suggestions anyone?

Brave dogs

The War Dog Memorial, " Always Faithful.", located on Guam, honours the Dobermans that served with the Marines in 1944 and played a crucial role in recapturing the island.
Less than twenty-four hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded Guam, a small Pacific island and an American possession. For two and a half years, the brave people of Guam endured a horrible occupation.
On 21st July 1944, the Americans struck back and secured the island. American Marine, Army, and Navy casualties exceeded 7,000. An estimated 18,500 Japanese were killed, and another 8,000 Japanese remained hidden in the jungle refusing to surrender.
Among the dead were 25 dogs, specially trained by the U.S. Marines to search out the enemy hiding in the bush, detect mines and booby traps, alert troops in foxholes at night to approaching Japanese, and to carry messages, ammunition and medical supplies. They were buried in a small section of the Marine Cemetery, in a rice paddy on the landing beach at Asan that became known as the War Dog Cemetery.

Interestingly enough, most of the young Marines were assigned to the war dog program only by a twist of fate. Some had never owned a dog in their lives, and some were even afraid of them. But trained as dog handlers, they were expected to scout far forward of US lines, in treacherous jungle terrain, searching for Japanese soldiers hidden in caves or impenetrable thickets. Under these circumstances, the rifles we carried were often useless; a handler's most reliable weapons were his dog's highly developed senses of smell and hearing, which could alert him far in advance of an enemy ambush or attack, or the presence of a deadly mine, so he could warn in turn the Marines who followed behind at a safer distance. It was one of the most dangerous jobs in World War II, and more dogs were employed by the 2nd and 3rd Platoons on Guam than in all of the other battles in the Pacific.

In these battles, as in their training, the men learned to depend on their dogs and to trust their dogs' instincts with their lives. William W. Putney says that when he returned home from overseas, he found that rather than spend the time and expense to detrain the dogs, the military had begun to destroy them. The dogs, primarily Doberman Pinschers and German Shepherds, had been recruited from the civilian population with the promise that they be returned, intact, when the war ended. Army and political officials argued that these dogs suffered from the "junkyard dog" syndrome ie: they were killers. Putney thought they were wrong and lobbied for the right to detrain these dogs and won. The program of de-indoctrination was overwhelmingly successful: out of the 549 dogs that returned from the war, only 4 could not be detrained and returned to civilian life. Household pets once, the dogs became household pets again. In many cases, in fact, because the original civilian owners were unable or unwilling to take the dogs back, the dogs went home with the handlers that they had served so well during the war.

William Putney enlisted in the Marines in 1943 at the age of 23 in search of military glory. Instead, Putney, a licensed veterinarian, was relegated to the Dog Corps.
Putney became the Commanding Officer of the 3rd War Dog Platoon, and later the chief veterinarian and C.O. of the War Dog Training School at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
His book, Always Faithful, is the story of the dogs that fought in Guam and across the islands of the Pacific, a celebration of the four-legged soldiers that Putney both commanded and followed. It is a tale of immense courage, but also of incredible sacrifice.

Trash

There is an exhibition of Serge van de Put’s work in Antwerp, the city were he was born. Actually so was I! He is a contemporary artist who is fascinated by the relics of our consumer society and uses trash and bits and pieces chosen for their colour and their shape. In his present work, he uses car tyres and uses them to produce figurative and explicit images of our society. He is fascinated by the human face and especially its expression of personality and temperament. He obviously likes animals. The exhibition features dogs, elephants, polar bears, monkeys, giraffes, tigers, all made out of the same grey and dull material. Rubber from tyres. Van de Put feels colour distracts and seduces the eye. The emphasis is on shape. His work was presented at the recent Venice Biennale where he exhibited an elephant.

In my thoughts

Aung San Sun Kyi is in my thoughts today on her 64th Birthday which, sadly, she will not be celebrating with friends and family.


"The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government". FD Roosevelt