Notes from the Pack

the dog at the gate

2018-03-03T18:55:00.001-05:00

Stella | August 2004 ~ February 2018

The Divine Old Dog is restless tonight

she circles and circles

she licks at her paws

she does not hear her name

is confused and uncertain

she is abashed at her accidents

she tried to say but could not.

Are you at the gate great creature?

are you proud, old girl tired of

this cold winter day

these human needs and dramas

this winter world

does the cold make your legs ache?

Divine Old Dogs accept

the ways of the world

the nature of life

they come when they choose

leave when they are ready

they have all sorts of ways to tell us

when it is time

and they always decide

never us.

Excerpt from the poem 'Divine Old Dog at the Gate'

Jon Katz at Bedlam Farm

doubledig

2016-12-30T20:57:00.000-05:00

Dreamcat. Fonk. What? Scurrr. Ah,

canfood. We’re awake now: canfood.

Canfood. Good. Lickbowl. Good.

Door. Dooroutnow. Look. I’m looking.

What? Doorwhat? Doorout right? Right?

Knobnow. Good. I’m gone. Cat.

Realcat now. Hot damn. Damncat.

Fence! Same fence. Yep. Same fence.

Yep. High. Yep. Yep. Strong. Yep.

God. God, rip same fence. God,

schnauzer down same fence. No? Cat,

now: catfeet spookaway fence: spring:

cat flies: cat balances on top. Me: dig.

Dog dig, did dig, do dig, doubledig.

Now… underground now… fence.

Piss on same, on fence, on fencepost.

Me: I mark this. This is mine.

'Nietzsche Possessed'

~ Brooks Haxton

Photography: Susan Bein of wizmosis

'Nietzsche Possessed' is from "Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs"

Editors - Amy Hempel & Jim Shepard

almost nothing

2016-09-13T18:01:00.000-04:00

A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing.

~ Mary Oliver, Dog Songs

Paintings: Andrew Wyeth

… Dogs' sense of smell overpowers our own by orders of magnitude—it's 10,000 to 100,000 times as acute, scientists say... "If you make the analogy to vision, what you and I can see at a third of a mile, a dog could see more than 3,000 miles away and still see as well."

… Dogs can detect some odors in parts per trillion. What does that mean in terms we might understand? … while we might notice if our coffee has had a teaspoon of sugar added to it, a dog could detect a teaspoon of sugar in a million gallons of water, or two Olympic-sized pools worth.

… Experts have reported incredible true stories about the acuteness of dogs' sense of smell. There's the drug-sniffing dog that "found" a plastic container packed with 35 pounds of marijuana submerged in gasoline within a gas tank. There's the black lab stray from the streets of Seattle that can detect floating orca scat from up to a mile away across the choppy waters of Puget Sound. There's the cancer-sniffing dog that "insisted" on melanoma in a spot on a patient's skin that doctors had already pronounced cancer-free; a subsequent biopsy confirmed melanoma in a small fraction of the cells. And so on...

From “Dog's Dazzling Sense of Smell” – NOVA
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-sense-of-smell.html

the cure for anything

2016-07-12T21:27:00.001-04:00

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.

- Isak Dinesen

Photos:

Jon Nickson - eyeSpice Photography

Aboard Sail Beluga

The Turks & Caicos Islands

July 2016

the blue dog

2016-02-28T08:43:00.000-05:00

'October / loss of one of the senses / weltschmerz / unnatural voices / disorders of the knee / diseases of the tongue / disturbances / miscarriage of a child / an accident in a garage / dementia / fraud / a quarrel / wispiness'

- from Edward Gorey's tongue-in-cheek tarot set, The Fantod Deck

the old dog for the hard road

2016-02-05T09:45:00.000-05:00

The old dog for the hard road and leave the pup on the path.

- Irish proverb

Photo:

Stella
Cornwall, Connecticut
January 2016

in the company of dogs

2016-01-24T12:52:00.001-05:00

( Photo by Ren Nickson )

'There is a cycle of love and death that shapes the lives of those who choose to travel in the company of animals. It is a cycle unlike any other. To those who have never lived through its turnings or walked its rocky path, our willingness to give our hearts with full knowledge that they will be broken seems incomprehensible.

Only we know how small a price we pay for what we receive; our grief, no matter how powerful it may be, is an insufficient measure of the joy we have been given.'

Suzanne Clothier
'Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs'

los perros perdidos

2016-01-22T11:03:00.002-05:00

"We are separated from other animals by language, technology, and a fatal arrogance

that causes immense pain."

- Martin Usborne

Martin Usborne is in our opinion the photographer who is doing really amazing things with his portraits of dogs. They are not just beautiful pictures; they capture something of the noble spirit and gentle sadness of a neglected dog. His first series, Dogs In Cars, was haunting in its depiction of lonely, isolated dogs in a dark and urban setting.

His latest work is more powerful still - check out the National Geographic article about Usborne's time in Spain, photographing the hunting dogs that are often abandoned or killed after the hare-coursing season ends.

See more of Martin Usborne's work here.

The National Geographic article on his work in Spain is here.

And here's a link to a rescue group that focuses on the galga and podenco hunting dogs of Spain.

a dog of peace and tranquility

2015-09-14T15:57:00.001-04:00

Sir, this is a unique dog. He does not live by tooth or fang.

He respects the right of cats to be cats although he doesn't admire them.

He turns his steps rather than disturb an earnest caterpillar.

His greatest fear is that someone will point out a rabbit and suggest that he chase it.

This is a dog of peace and tranquility.

- John Steinbeck

Travels with Charley in Search of America

Photo: William Eggleston

building the dog

2015-08-12T14:07:00.000-04:00

For reasons both practical and whimsical, man's best friend has been artificially evolved into the most diverse animal on the planet—a staggering achievement, given that most of the 350 to 400 dog breeds in existence have been around for only a couple hundred years.

The breeders gave no thought, of course, to the fact that while coaxing such weird new dogs into existence, they were also tinkering with the genes that determine canine anatomy in the first place.

Scientists since have assumed that underneath the morphological diversity of dogs lay an equivalent amount of genetic diversity. A recent explosion in canine genomic research, however, has led to a surprising, and opposite, conclusion: The vast mosaic of dog shapes, colors, and sizes is decided largely by changes in a mere handful of gene regions.

Excerpts from 'Mix, Match, Morph'

National Geographic

Musical dogs and their album covers - various

benefits

2015-07-29T15:50:00.002-04:00

The psychological and moral comfort of a presence at once humble

and understanding - this is the greatest benefit that

the dog has bestowed upon man.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Photo of Stella the Rhodesian Ridgeback by Ren Nickson.

lunch

2015-07-25T15:44:00.003-04:00

'After the sun rose, we followed three of the Hadzabe men into the bush. Within minutes they were darting through the thicket directing each other with bird calls, shooting Kanga by bow and arrow with uncanny accuracy.

Four birds later, in a shaded patch along a clearing, they made a perfect fire in minutes using sticks and cooked one of the Kanga to perfection. They put the meat on a bed of fresh leaves to cool.

As we ate together, scraps and bones were tossed to their dogs.'

- photograph and words, Markus Jarrow

schooner the potcake

2015-07-09T15:19:00.001-04:00

Ren is editing a documentary right now about an expedition at sea to find the true place of Columbus' first landfall in the New World.

The photographer, Jon, kept saying in some of the footage "I am not going on this trip if Schooner can't come" and we were wondering who the heck Schooner was...

Meet Schooner.

A Potcake, long-time crew member on Sail Beluga, and famous resident of the Turks & Caicos Islands.

Unfortunately, Schooner wasn't able to go on the 'Following Columbus' expedition, but here he is, with all his sugar-faced charm, photographed by Jon for the Turks & Caicos SPCA calendar.

All photos by Jon Nickson / eyeSpice

divine old dog

2015-01-22T11:34:00.000-05:00

The Divine Old Dog is restless tonight

she circles and circles

she licks at her paws

she does not hear her name

is confused and uncertain

she is abashed at her accidents

she tried to say but could not.

Are you at the gate great creature?

are you proud, old girl tired of

this cold winter day

these human needs and dramas

this winter world

does the cold make your legs ache?

Divine Old Dogs accept

the ways of the world

the nature of life

they come when they choose

leave when they are ready

they have all sorts of ways to tell us

when it is time

and they always decide

never us.

Excerpt from the poem 'Divine Old Dog at the Gate'

Jon Katz at Bedlam Farm

Paintings by Miguel Macaya

other nations

2014-10-08T21:44:00.002-04:00

'We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more

mystical concept of animals... We patronize them

for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate

for having taken form so far below ourselves.

And therein do we err.

For the animal shall not be measured by man.

In a world older and more complete than ours,

they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension

of the senses we have lost or never attained,

living by voices we shall never hear.

They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations,

caught with ourselves in the net of life and time,

fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.'

- Henry Beston

'The Outermost House'

dog wish

2014-03-30T11:01:00.001-04:00

'Man is troubled by what might be called the Dog Wish,

a strange and involved compulsion to be

as happy and carefree as a dog.'

- James Thurber

Dog portraits by Candace Compton Pappas

two dogs and ball

2014-03-07T15:11:00.000-05:00

Dog Duet - William Wegman, 1972

Check out the William Wegman page at Artsy

wild life

2013-11-30T16:49:00.005-05:00

Collectively, dogs remind us all of what it means to be more wild

— an effect that, it turns out, is not just psychological.

Dogs link us to wild landscapes in at least ten ways,

each of which is of consequence for the simple reason

that there are now so damned many dogs, perhaps half a billion,

perhaps more (WHO-WSPA 1990), sniffing through

civilization’s rank corridors and then beyond.

- "Your Wild Life"

Photo by Ren Nickson

the dog of our own life

2013-11-12T13:41:00.003-05:00

'Because of the dog’s joyfulness,

our own is increased.

It is no small gift.

It is not the least reason why

we should honor as well as love

the dog of our own life,

and the dog down the street,

and all the dogs not yet born.

What would the world be like

without music or rivers or

the green and tender grass?

What would this world be like without dogs?'

- Mary Oliver, Dog Songs

(via the fabulous Brainpickings)

Photos: Jon Nickson, eyeSpice

dogs + philosophers

2013-10-22T11:01:00.006-04:00

'Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.'

- Diogenes 'The Dog' of Sinope

schnauze!

2013-06-03T11:21:00.004-04:00

'The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up,

such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines,

or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night

was a comfortably long way off.

A dog's wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch,

but it has it's own peculiar dreadfulness which connoisseurs of the ghastly

and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread.

It's like having a small piece of defrosting liver

pressed lovingly against you.'

- Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

'Schnauze - Nice Nosing You'

Pictures by Elke Vogelsang at Wieselblitz

notes from the sunny spot

2013-05-22T00:22:00.001-04:00

Stella

Atascadero, California

May 2013

the deformity of words

2013-03-08T00:44:00.002-05:00

Not a single one of his myriad sensations ever submitted itself to the deformity of words.

- from 'Flush: A Biography' (Virginia Woolf)

Images: Dogfight With Writing & Black Dog Running

by Bill Traylor

get it, ray ray

2013-02-08T00:21:00.006-05:00

Turks & Caicos Islands

February 2013

Video: Jon Nickson, eyeSpice

the heart of a man

2013-01-22T11:23:00.000-05:00

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

― Immanuel Kant

Photo: Mike and his Dog, by Jonathan Levitt