Acts of kindness towards animals

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Ravenlocke (here)
Mulboyne

In Britain, a 13 volunteers mobilised to rescue a 33kg Akita inu called Rocky. Rocky was hiking with his owners in the Lake District when he refused to move on. Rescuers carried him down Scafell Pike on a stretcher. There are no plans for a statue. https://telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05...lake-district/

https://x.com/Mulboyne/status/1658261902705967105

Wow, I had to find out what exactly had happened. (Rocky was exhausted and had cut his paw. He was perfectly okay and no statue was needed!) Here's a short video about the incident:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=llsOBJ92ydQ

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

Posted by Ravenlocke (here)
Mulboyne

In Britain, a 13 volunteers mobilised to rescue a 33kg Akita inu called Rocky. Rocky was hiking with his owners in the Lake District when he refused to move on. Rescuers carried him down Scafell Pike on a stretcher. There are no plans for a statue. https://telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05...lake-district/

https://x.com/Mulboyne/status/1658261902705967105

Wow, I had to find out what exactly had happened. (Rocky was exhausted and had cut his paw. He was perfectly okay and no statue was needed!) Here's a short video about the incident:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=llsOBJ92ydQ

I was thinking some more about this, since (as many of you know!) I climb fairly high mountains quite frequently with my own dog, Mara.

My guess is that Rocky was far more of a playing-in-the-city-park kind of dog, unaccustomed to long strenuous days out and walking on very rough stony ground (which is what the summit of Scafell Pike is like). So his paw-pads might have been relatively soft, compared with Mara's paw-pads, which after a lifetime of mountaineering are as tough as shoe leather.

I also know that when Mara's on a long hike, especially one with a lot of climbing, she needs water. (Not food or doggie treats!) I've climbed Scafell Pike many times, and there's almost no water anywhere near the summit. And if Rocky's owners just had coffee or orange juice with them, that wouldn't have helped the big thirsty dog one bit. If I'm going anywhere with Mara where I know there's little or no water, I always make sure I carry plenty enough fresh water for her with a little plastic bowl for her to drink out of.

And a dog's apparent size and strength (for lolloping round in the park or playing with the kids!) doesn't count at all. Like humans doing anything athletic, a dog needs to be in pretty good shape for mountain hiking. As many of you also know, Mara is 13 years old (= 85 years old for a human!), and is blind, but she's in such good condition that she still climbs high mountains easily. (Here she was just this morning, happily at the summit of a 14,000 ft peak in Ecuador.)



Of course, I've thought of what I'd do if Mara was ever in trouble way up high and needed a rescue. I could empty out my backpack and just about fit her in, and though she weighs 50 lbs I could get her down myself that way. (But whether she'd relish that new experience is entirely another matter! )

[shaberon]

Posted by Ravenlocke (here)
In a coastal town in Greece, a local chef has quietly turned his restaurant kitchen into more than just a place for customers. At the end of each day, instead of discarding leftover ingredients that are still safe and fresh, he sets them aside with a different purpose. The extra rice, vegetables, and portions of meat are carefully cooked again — this time for the town’s stray dogs.

What is impressive there -- being strays, not used to people -- is how orderly and composed they look.

Here, I think only one of our dogs was a normal purchase, shopped for and selected for the kind of dog she is, part Boston Terrier or something close to that.

The others were all salvaged from some category of "extra, unwanted beings"; our goat was slated for euthanasia. We're not a shelter, but we try to give a good life to a few creatures from disadvantaged situations.

Usually there are no problems. My presence will pacify them. I've had a goat nose kiss a cat. That's a hard level to reach.

However, I am a little concerned about them on their own and a tendency to gang up. We think they may have killed one of our cats. A few weeks ago, a raccoon came to the house, probably trying to escape the cold. The dogs surrounded and attacked it, and someone just happened to be there and stopped it. We then took in the raccoon and kenneled it until it seemed to have recovered, and released it back into the wild.

I don't know how to curb this behavior. Seems like a hard-wired pack mentality that pops out on the occasion of finding something their own size (small).