Sunday, July 25, 2010

The Dog and the Orangutan

I had to make an entry into the blog regarding this amazing story. There have been a few like it I've noticed where bonds between individuals of two different non-human species have formed. It's interesting in this video that it's an orangutan and a dog: the orangutan being human-like and the dog of course being one of our closest non-human companions. And so, it kind of makes sense.

At any rate, I was very moved by this story. There's another story that got me about an elephant and the dog who became great friends in the elephant sanctuary. Have you seen that one? Perhaps this is anthropomorphising in that it looks like these animals are "best friends", but it appears that they have truly chosen to spend time together in trust and play. What's also amazing to notice is these animals don't "speak" the way we do. They communicate without words. At the risk of sounding arrogant, this is remarkable. They don't have or need verbal language to communicate with each other.

We are noticing this with the horses. In my personal journey, I am learning to trust my intuition and my non-verbal abilities - which we all have - to receive and send messages, in other words, to communicate with the horses. It's going reasonably well but it has been a challenge to deal with the mental chatter and to trust what I'm "hearing".

Dogs are probably the masters of reading our non-verbal communication which is maybe what makes them good at these unusual interspecies friendships. Hard to say. In the book, Edgar Sawtelle, the author is truly gifted at describing in rich detail the dogs' experiences with humans, especially the dog named Almondine. Her main human is a young boy, Edgar, who is unable to speak. He can only sign and they get each other in ways that most of us only dream about. I'll write more about this later and perhaps include an exerpt as an example.

At any rate, enjoy the video!

http://www.wimp.com/orangutandog/

Thursday, July 22, 2010

A New Blog is Born

You haven't heard from me for a while. I've been playing with some horses AND doing research on a new book I want to write called "Is Your Dog a Rock Star?" But more about that later. My friend and business partner has a new blog. It's called Beyond Horse Personalities. Dessa Hockley has been busting to share some of the amazing stories and revelations she's been witness to through our work at Liberty Stables. You'll have to go and see what it's all about. The book, "Is Your Horse a Rock Star?" is making its way around the world. People are blogging about it and taking the quiz.

And I won't forget to keep you posted about the dog book as we are affectionately calling it....