A belated entry into 2020, but here I go (2/5/2020)

The guilt feelings are creeping up, I have not posted in almost two months. Why is that? Well, a minor case of depression has set in. In addition to it being a brand spanking new year, and relatively little daylight, we have currently been looking at a year started with record high temperatures. I put a positive spin on the temperatures, by telling folks on my Facebook page that it was wonderful that “Summer fell on the weekend this month.” But in fact, it is darn scary to have temperatures in the mid-70s or around 25 degrees Celsius in the middle of January and again this week, while Facebook was reminding us of the 10 inches of snow, we had two years ago. That is global warming for you. Or should we call it climate change? Still, a whole section of society does not seem to give a damn about what is happening to the earth.

At least the weather allowed me to work on the back deck a bit and on repotting a bonsai of mine. In addition, a friend of ours redid her yard and removed several azaleas and donated two to my bonsai selection. I really had to hack at the roots of these 25-year-old plants and now it is hoping they survive. 

This all somehow kept my mind away from the major issue at hand. Two days after the new year we got the message that my trusty old dog Jake was diagnosed with inoperable cancer of either the liver of pancreas. I have written a lot about my walks with my dogs, in particular Jake, in the woods behind my home. That news really hurt. We are now in doggy hospice, waiting for the inevitable. Yes, we adopted a new dog, Jasper, on November 17, and I am sure he will eventually fill the gap that Jake will leave, but this guy is special.

A photo of Jake take on February 1 this year.  He still looks in decent shape, although a month ago the vet said he had days of weeks to live.  I'll miss the old guy.

Jasper our new dog has made himself at home.  Being a hound he has to sleep in a pack and always need to be close to Jake.  I want to bet that he'll miss Jake as well.

Jake was adopted 11 years ago. We had gone to the Newport News SPCA to look at the border collie, but that dog was too crazy, jumped on kitchen counters and seemed like a piece of work. Then we saw Jake, cowering in his cage in a corner and somehow, we fell in love. In the beginning he was a runner, and we had to keep him under control, on the leash and we fenced in a small section of our yard. He has gotten much mellower and if he can help it and is not being pushed out of the way by Jasper, every morning he will site next to me for a back and head rub. 

Oh well, folks that is the issue with being an animal lover. Most animals have a shorter lifespan than us and it is something we are confronted with a number of times during our life. At least three times in my life did the dog we owned disappear and never returned. Our first one was old, and I suspect she walked off to die alone somewhere in the bush of Curacao, the island I grew up on. The second was a runner, and we never knew what happened to her. So was the third, Moses, and my parents found him dead, obviously hit by a car somewhere in the Netherlands where we lived at the time. All other dog we had to deal with mortality one way or another. 

The relationship between humans and their pets is a beautiful thing. I guess it is because the pets show something like unconditional love; a thing that does not happen much in human relationships. Pets become completely integrated into the household and act like they own the place. I was amazed last night when my wife told me about a colleague of hers whose son sent their young family pet to a trainer for two weeks to get obedience training. The trainer seems to do this with electroshocking and now the, in our eyes, poor young dog just shakes when being called or told to sit, in anticipation of getting a shock if he is not obeying. I cannot imagine taking all the spontaneity, love, and trust out of an animal like that.

In his book “The Empathic Civilization,” Jeremy Rifkin discusses how babies are born with unconditional love and empathy but somehow somewhere we lose it. A new form of empathic humans needs to evolve he argues for the human race and civilization to survive. I did not get a chance to finish the book completely, and I will, once I retire. One thing is for sure, we desperately need more empathy and compassion in this world. We seemed to have lost it judging from the callousness of our current politicians willing to stick children in cages and look the other way just to save their political skin. 

Having said all this, judging from the first month of the new year, 2020 is not going to be much more empathetic. To the contrary, it is showing to be worse, politically, humanity wise and even the climate is showing signs that it will have no mercy.