Things you may or may not know about Amazing Grace

This isn’t my favorite version of Amazing Grace but it’s great in its own way. Some interesting back ground on gospel music included. Did you know gospel music can be played on all the black notes of the piano. The gospel singer here, Wintley Phipps made me laugh when he relayed a piece of advise someone in his life gave to him. Paraphrasing a bit, “You can’t climb a mountain if the sides are smooth.” Love that. Anyway when it’s sung by someone with the right voice but more importantly the right heart it’s on my top ten of songs. This isn’t in my top ten of the top ten versions but the history appealed to me. You could fast forward to where the history lesson ends but it helps accent the performance. This is a cut and paste” “At Carnegie Hall, gospel singer Wintley Phipps delivers perhaps the most powerful rendition of Amazing Grace ever recorded. He says, “A lot of people don’t realize that just about all Negro spirituals are written on the black notes of the piano. Probably the most famous on this slave scale was written by John Newton, who used to be the captain of a slave ship, and many believe he heard this melody that sounds very much like a West African sorrow chant. And it has a haunting, haunting plaintive quality to it that reaches past your arrogance, past your pride, and it speaks to that part of you that’s in bondage. And we feel it. We feel it. It’s just one of the most amazing melodies in all of human history.” After sharing the noteworthy history of the song, Mr. Phipps delivers a stirring performance that brings the audience to its feet! If you have a version you like let me know I’ll check it out and add it to my collection.

Deadlines – Time is Money?

To prove to their deadlines setting clients that creativity takes time, Hungarian ad agency Café Creative decided to create a “deadlines” cautionary tale video. They visited some schoolchildren and asked them to perform two tasks: They challenged the children to complete two drawings where the deadlines were 10 seconds and the next 10 minutes.  Watch the results of this short video and and if your muse nudges you into a little creative action make a comment or draw a 10 minute clock and post it here. Café Creative landed itself on the 2011 Golden Drum shortlist. The Golden Drum International Festival awards “celebrate and reward the most creative, the bravest and the very best from New Europe”  And we will do so with a new, fresh and unique approach to the competition of the festival. Don’t let others take your award away, as there are many to be won this year.” Ironically I had a devil of a time trying to figure out from their website as to exactly it is they’re celebrating – it seem to be creative advertising. I’d love to go but I’ll have to set some deadlines if I’m going to make it.

It reminds me of a deadlines story I heard told about Henry Kissinger and a junior man on his team when he was Secretary of State. The story is told by that man, now retired ambassador Winston Lord.

WL: … Kissinger was a speechwriter. He thought speeches made policy, and he took great care on them. I did more of this later when he was in the State Department, so you’d have to go through about 20 drafts and many insults before you got to the final speech.

INT: Yeah, biographies of Kissinger have him jumping up and down on speeches. Isn’t there an anecdote where… you’d written a speech and he kept having you re-write it and saying, “Can’t you do any better?” and clearly he hadn’t read them?

WL: Well, basically it was, I went in with a draft, and it was actually of a presidential foreign policy report. This is slightly apocryphal and not directly on your subject here, but I would go in with a draft of the speech. He called me in the next day and said, “Is this the best you can do?” I said, “Henry, I thought so, but I’ll try again.” So I go back in a few days, another draft. He called me in the next day and he said, “Are you sure this is the best you can do?” I said, “Well, I really thought so. I’ll try one more time.” Anyway, this went on eight times, eight drafts; each time he said, “Is this the best you can do?” So I went in there with a ninth draft, and when he called me in the next day and asked me that same question, I really got exasperated and I said, “Henry, I’ve beaten my brains out – this is the ninth draft. I know it’s the best I can do: I can’t possibly improve one more word.” He then looked at me and said, “In that case, now I’ll read it.”

- The Dog Shouter

Eagle Owl on The Hunt

Not much to say about this other than with an Eagle Owl around I’m glad I’m not a rodent. 1,000 frames per second and in high definition. Worth a minute.

This Alpha Roll “Journalist/Reporter” has a future with the Fox Network.

I’m on a subscriber’s list for a site that connects experts with media in search of expertise. They post what they’re writing about and subscribers contact them if they have something to contribute. This request about the alpha roll came today.

24) Summary: Dog Trainers: How Do You Feel About the Alpha Roll Over?
Name: Kimberly Gauthier Examiner.com

Category: Lifestyle and Fitness

Email: **********

Media Outlet: Examiner.com

Deadline: 7:00 PM PST – 31 October

Query:

As a dog trainer, how do you feel about the alpha roll over as a
training tool? What type of training method do you promote?
And what is your goal when training a dog, whether it is your
own or a client’s dog? Are you shooting for “listens 95% of the
time?” 100% of the time? Excellent re-call?

The point of this article is to raise awareness of various
training methods dog owners can use, educate dog owners on the
pros (if there are any) and cons of using the Alpha Roll Over
method, and help them feel okay if today their dog didn’t listen
to one command. It’s all a work in progress.

Requirements:

Due to the overwhelming response I get from the dog training
community, I’m only able to respond to people who submit a
response with more detail than just a name and number. I’ll
respond with any follow up questions and plan to link back to
your site.

No matter what one’s thoughts are about “alpha rolling” one would hope that if the reporter had an agenda they’d at least have the sense to to mask it somewhat. I’m betting this isn’t a reporter at all. It will be someone that has owned a dog or two in their life, loves dogs, loves dogs, love dogs and volunteers down at the shelter and now perceives themself as an expert and is going to write a story about something she won’t know the first thing about because true experts aren’t going to waste their time. The article about alpha rolls will get published and she’ll be a hero. . .Some reporting.

For the record, for the most part I’m against the alpha roll I wouldn’t support a journalist/reporter that takes the assignment without an open mind.

“The point of this article is to raise awareness of various
training methods dog owners can use”

She adds:

on the pros (if there are any) and cons of using the Alpha Roll Over

Aren’t you supposed to actually wait until you’ve done your research before you slant an article.

Dawn Wike - Adams County SPCA

Family dog put down by the SPCA on these grounds? This SPCA needs an audit and a real shake up or needs to be shut down.

Family Dog Put Down

Right from the beginning, the little Norwegian elkhound/yellow Labrador mix puppy became part of the Seymore family. That was back in the spring of 2003, when Dale and Kathy Seymore purchased the dog for their young children. The playful and affectionate dog that they named Max had a cozy, insulated kennel on the deck and enjoyed the Seymores’ 11-acre farm in Mount Pleasant Township. Despite the dog’s healthy size, he was afraid of loud noises and rain. “My kids were attached to this dog from the start,” said Dale Seymore, noting that his children picked him out of a litter at a local pet store. “When you have a dog for that many years, it’s part of the family.” Which makes what happened over the Fourth of July holiday so much more traumatic for the Seymores. The couple claim the dog was unnecessarily, and too quickly, euthanized (put down) by the Adams County SPCA after it ran away from home and was picked up by shelter manager Dawn Wike, whom they say abused her power. And last week, the Seymores convinced the Conewago Township supervisors to scratch their previously approved $2,500 contribution to the SPCA to be written into the 2012 budget. “We don’t believe in making trouble but this ain’t right,” Dale Seymore said. “We’ll go to any township meeting that we can until they get this situation corrected.” For her part, Wike disputes the Seymores’ claims and said she was forced to euthanize the dog because it bit her and a nearby homeowner, and posed a risk to the public. According to the Seymores, they were on vacation in Minnesota over the Fourth of July weekend and their 22-year-old daughter and her husband were caring for the animals at the farm. Dale Seymore said Max got loose during a thunderstorm on the evening of July 2 and made his way to a house about a mile away where a party was going on. He said the dog did not scare or bother anyone at the party, but the homeowner called State Police out of concern for the dog, because it was getting late. The police notified the SPCA and Wike picked up the dog early the next morning and euthanized it shortly thereafter, Dale Seymore said. “I talked to the State Police and I read their report,” Dale Seymore said. “They (the homeowners) weren’t worried that the dog was a danger to anyone, they were worried about the dog. “The officer said he never would have left that site if he thought that dog posed a threat,” Seymore said. But Wike said the dog bit a person when it showed up at the other house and bit her slightly on the ankle when she tried to load it into the SPCA van. Wike said when she arrived on the scene around 6 a.m. on July 3, the dog was on the front porch of a house across the street from where he was reported and some residents assisted her in rounding up the animal. She said the dog had a collar but no tags or microchip to identify it. She said neither the State Police nor the animal shelter had received a call reporting the dog missing. Under state law, Wike said, she is permitted to euthanize an animal if it’s determined to pose a threat to public health and safety. Read more

All Positive All the Time Is Illogical Captain

I am an all positive dog training ALMOST all the time

Since I am an all positive dog training – almost all the time dog trainer I welcome the contributions of any “all positive – all the time” trainer that can contribute to that end of my tool bag but just so we understand each other here’s my take on this topic of “all positive all the time/ignore bad behavior and reward good behavior only:

1. There is no species on the planet that has ever successfully raised their young by being all positive all the time.
2. There is no species on the planet that has ever successfully raised their your by being all negative all the time.
3. All species do raise their young with love and discipline intended to encourage desirable behavior and discourages undesirable behavior.
4. Level of discipline or reward is not defined by the trainer, dog owner, the tool of choice. Level’s are determined by the student. What it values it is used as the reward, what it perceives as a disincentive is used as its discipline.
5. The dog is the only species on the planet that has been selectively bred to please human beings. The use of “treats” has value but is vastly over done and in many trainers is used to provide the illusion they are training when they are in fact teaching tricks.
6. Dog trainers that are “clicker trainers” are not professional dog trainers. Dog trainers that use clickers as one of the tools used in their dog training might be professional dog trainers. The same applies to any dog trainer that claims to be an “one tool trainer”. This becomes particularly evident when said trainers express that their is correct/worthwhile/humane etc. tool.
7. A professional dog trainer may specialize in the use of a specific tool/method, such as clicker training, ecollar training etc. and as a result almost exclusively work with dogs referred to them as candidates identified in need of their particular skill set.
8. The “science” presented as “proof” that all positive all the time/ignore bad behavior is sound and that it must act as the foundation of all training is not accepted as good science by scientists that specialize in the fields of ethology, biology and psychology. The studies are incomprehensibly structured and the conclusions are either agenda oriented or simply naive.

The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) English biologist.

What Mr. Huxley calls “laws of nature” I called in my book Nature’s Template (The Beautiful Balance – Dog Training with Nature’s Template). In the case of what I see as the inexcusable ignorance that is all positive all the time/ignore bad behavior-reward good behavior, the cost is the lives of dogs. Some in a physical sense – never having been properly trained, killed because they were unable to come when called, returned to breeder, surrendered to shelters because they were not taught what they needed to coexist with the people they lived with. In others the results are less dramatic but equally inhumane. These are the dogs are denied access to much of their owner’s world. Unable to exert self-control they can not go places or do things that any where near approach what their genetic imperatives have designed them to do. They live lives of unnecessary sterility that was never the intent of their owners.

Dog trainers can be weird bunch. I know I are one and I hang out with a lot of them. Some by choice, some by necessity. A lot are weird in the sort of cross the street to get away when you see one sort of way, but at the IACP Conference I met a lot that were weird in a cross the street to meet them sort of way. With the exception of one bizarre Canadian (not you Stanley or you Pamela, the latter of which I didn’t actually get to meet before I had to fly out) they had some very high profile speakers.

A Great Bunch

The IACP 10th Anniversary Speakers Top L-R Stanley Coren, John Wade, Brother Christopher (Monks of New Skete)Bottom L – R Sarah Wilson, Cheri Lucas, Kyra Sundance, Pam Loritzen
BROTHER CHRISTOPHER OF THE MONKS OF NEW SKETE – Dog and IJOHN WADE – Aggressive Dog Assessment ProtocolSTANLEY COREN – Canine Language And CommunicationCHERI LUCAS – Behavior Modification Through Pack WorkKYRA SUNDANCE – Training Trick And Stunt Dogs/Practical Exercise  With  DogsSARAH WILSON – Women And Dogs/Working With PeoplePAM LORITZEN – Grooming Techniques for the Non GroomerPAM REID – Canine Cognition: A Glimpse Into The Dog’s Mind
It was my first time in Texas as well. Do you know every Texan I met was friendly. Friendly as in get in the car with one without thinking twice about it friendly. The toll booth guys made you want to meet them after work for a beer. The airport goons were having a hard time keeping stern expressions on their faces. It was a great place and one I want to visit again. There was one exception and oddly the very last Texan face I saw as I boarded the plane. It was a twenty-nothing male, about 5′ 3″ tall wearing 3″ 1970′s heels. He was acting like someone had peed in his corn flakes that morning for sure. He was actually fairly nice to me but it may have been my striking resemblance to Brad Pitt but everyone else was feeling his pain for sure.
On my flight back I had a layover in South Carolina and had some of the local cuisine. OMG, it was so good that I went to the kitchen and offered the cooks a choice between a hug and a tip. They took the tip.