Why do Dogs Eat Shit?

Basically there are four main reasons dog eat shit. 

1.      It can be a vitamin deficiency and by giving them supplements they stop. 

2.      It is a learned behaviour, they see others do it and then try it. 

3.      They grow accustomed to the taste and like it. 

4.      It can be an attention seeking device as they know their owners get really worked up when they see them eat shit. 

You can see that this behaviour can spill from one reason to another.  i.e. a dog sees other dogs do it and tries it, then grows accustomed to the taste and begins to like it. 
I feel there are parallels here with backbiting and gossiping.

1.      People have something missing in their own life so they focus on things they don't like in others

2.      They often listen to others gossiping and they assume that it is normal

3.      They do it so often it becomes a habit hard to stop – they enjoy it too much

4.      It often gets them extra attention from others so it has its rewards

Just as dogs don't eat their own shit, people don't like dealing with their own problems

But this backbiting and gossiping is toxic for those who are its focus and its effects can spread out and have long lasting unforeseen consequences. 

Sam and Noleen

The more of my stuff I put up the more I notice how dark so much of it is.  But then life has it all, the laughs the tears the losses the gains.  I suppose writing is a bit of therapy for me, so no apologies for the darker regions then.

 

Sam and Noleen

Soon it would be all over, he told himself.  Life was ebbing away, moving out.  He could feel less and less, physically, with every passing hour, but strangely his mental alertness was profoundly intense.  It was perverse.  Here he lay unable to move even an eyelid, with the morphine being pumped rhythmically into his body, and yet the distress of his wife Noleen, who sobbed beside him, was raw and painful.  He could hear her harsh sobs and occasional wheezes, her asthma catching her.

He felt her heart contract with pain and his own seemed to flutter in unison.  He wished he could reach out and stroke her hand, reassure her, but it was just that -  a wish.  He had no more time left to do all the undone things.  That page had turned.  She had been a lovely, loving wife.  No regrets there.  So many friends had suffered with bad humour, coldness and demands, whereas Noleen had been a joy from beginning to end.  Even now, as life drained away, the thought struck him that there was no one in the world he would rather have had with him at this moment.  Even her sadness soothed him confirmed that bond they had.  She rang true even at this late hour and Sam thanked the fates that had brought them together.

A nurse came in and he felt her check his morphine injector at his side, his bag of pee and his drip.  These things had been a source of annoyance - things attached that he longed to be free of but no more.  He was past that.  His world was contracting and physical things were way out there beyond him. Emotions swept around him and he was surprised he could feel them - like a fragrance.  The nurse’s was a sharp annoyance - metallic and tangy with a cold undercurrent, like dislike just barely hidden.  She was speaking to Noleen in clipped tones,

“Would you like a cup of tea? There’s a family room on the other wing.”

Noleen responded politely, but in tear filled shyness,

“No, thank you. Tell me… he’s not in pain is he?  He’s not suffering?”  Her voice rose in fear with each stuttering word.  There was fear in that last line and the nurse spoke factually,

“No, Mrs MacAllister, the morphine injections take care of that.  He is not in pain, just getting weaker.”  The nurse glanced at the blood pressure reading and ticked the chart at the end of the bed.

Noleen nodded and stroked his hand which she held gently.

“Yes, I can feel that.” Noleen whispered so low the nurse hardly heard.  But Sam did and the ocean of her loss surged across between them in the tiny kneading, stroking movements against his unresponsive hand.

The nurse asked, “How long have you been sitting here?”

Noleen answered, “I don’t really know.”

The nurse fussed around the sheets and pillows and Sam wanted her to go. She had an air of importance that intruded between him and Noleen.  So strange to be bothered by that now.  As if any of it mattered.

She was speaking now in knowing terms, “These things can take a long time, you know. Do you want to go and lie down?  There is a family room.  It’s nice and quite nearby.”  The nurse spoke confidently, in practiced tones.  But Sam felt his heart contract with fear at Noleen’s possible departure.  Just having her here in this room, holding his hand, eased the knot of fear that nestled inside him somewhere.  Noleen answered - apology in her gentle tone.

“No, it’s alright. Really. I’d rather just be here, if you don’t mind.”

The nurse spoke with her voice pitched in a ringing long-suffering tone, as if Noleen had forced the whole issue into confrontation with her stubbornness.

“Well, we don’t really like family being on the main ward with patients at night.  It is a matter of security and it can bother the other patients.  I’m so sorry; you’ll have to move to the family room.  If anything happens, I’ll call you,  if you like.” Her tone was confident and business like and he could feel Noleen quailing at her obvious authority.  But Noleen was trying to stay put and apologetically pleaded,

“Can’t I just stay here? I’ll be ever so quiet.”

The nurse was relentless and insistent,

“Well, you can imagine, the ward would be filled with family if we didn’t have rules.  I’ll have to ask you to go to the family room.  I’ll show you the way.”  There was a long awkward pause and then he heard Noleen get to her feet and move away, reluctantly stroking his hand in goodbye.

Noleen had always been polite.  It was the gentleness of her that had first attracted him.  That quiet stillness that made her seem untouched by the world.  He had wanted to protect her from all that would hurt her, help her keep that deep calm at her centre that no one could touch.  He’d been allowed to share that calmness all these years and he wanted to hug and thank her for each and every second they’d had.  He heard Noleen respond, “Of course.” She gathered her handbag and coat to go with the nurse, and he wanted her to stay so much.

The nurse was pulling back the curtains round the bed and moving away, talking about the facilitaties the family room had - the bed, the shower, etc.  Bloody woman, delighted now she had her way.  Their voices began to fade and Sam felt his fear begin to grow.  He was alone, Noleen was gone.  The silence of the ward stretched out like a cold vicious lover and its foreignness embraced him - the sounds of coughs and bed squeaks, the groan of a patient, three beds away.  The fear that had lay like a pet inside started to become agitated and growled.  He would die alone, then.  He remembered this fear like an old enemy, could taste it in his mouth, feel his stomach contract.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out. Nothing to ease the awful constricting fear. He was alone again, always alone.   He remembered the night he had met death before.  His mother had just laughed at something; he couldn’t remember what.  But her laugh was full bodied and infectious - as if the entire world was a great joke and you’d suddenly discovered the punch line.  Then she’d crumpled to the floor like a dishcloth and was blue in the face.  He’d screamed and screamed and his brothers and father came running but she had gone.  He’d seen, knew the very moment when life had ebbed away.  Knew it was his mother’s body lying there, but not her.  Just a husk.  Death had reached into his life and stolen its heart and nothing would ever be the same.  He remembered the images of the funeral, the tears, the empty house.  And he remembered hugging her old apron; the smell of her was in its pockets.  The laughter was gone and no one could fix it.  He took to collecting car numbers.  Hundreds and thousands of car number plates.  What the hell had that been about?  Death did that.  It robbed you of all purpose and direction and left you with a husk. Just meaningless routines that you followed for no reason.  He could see her face, still - the laughter changing to fear and that fear .. the presence of death in the room.  Stealing in and striking unawares, making a pretence of all that was valued in this stupid world.  Now it was here for him.  Noleen’s hand suddenly lifted his and squeezed.  He could tell her hands anywhere, so calloused and bony with huge arthritic knuckles.  She’d come back, she was with him, and he was not alone.  He heard her lean forward across the stiff sheets and whisper in his ear,

“I’ll have to be quiet, I’m not supposed to be here, Sam.”

Then she stroked his cheek and leant back, settling in the plastic chair beside him.  His heart filled with gratitude.  She was here, had filled his empty fear filled world, just as she had his whole life.  To be really alone is like being on a wild, wild sea and that was where he had been as a child, as a young man.  Then he had found her.  She didn’t have to speak. He could feel her love surround him and the fear fell away.  Death wasn’t so bad.  He and Noleen together in the darkness of the ward.  He knew he would not see the morning.  He could feel a floaty sensation beginning in his chest.  Difficult to describe but not unpleasant.  Then a sinking feeling, like when you fall when sleeping, but not frightening.  Like falling into something soft. And he knew to relax into it, not to fight it.  The sensation was becoming heavier.  He relaxed all his muscles, felt the strain of breathing, and stopped.  It was so good to stop. It felt right and then he wanted to laugh.  It was so simple - dying so easy, so natural. And he was so very grateful.

New Beginning

Poetry seems much more private than short stories.  Not sure why.  Hard to put it out there because of that.  But here goes.

New Beginning

To take that first step on any path

Requires something

It requires more than a movement of the foot

It needs more than seeing a way ahead

It demands more than being afraid of where you are now

It needs the rich soil of possibilities

Fed by the sweet water of sweat and tears

Refreshed by the breezes of hope

and nurtured by the realization that where you are now is not enough

An intuition that just beyond your sight

Lies a different landscape

One you sense but cannot see

So have Faith step out

Straighten your back

Walk tall, believe

Clear your vision from

The clouds of your past

See the person you were born to be

Striding into a future you don’t have yet

But one you are prepared to find

To take that first step requires something

It needs you to begin to be what you are not yet

But that first step, that is everything.

It is the beginning of who you are.

Mountains, Christians and Sheep

All about growing up in Dungiven in Northern Ireland. Six years old  and prepared to take on anyone - where did she go to, that kid?  I have grown more cautious over the years and have begun to realise how little I know.  That is surely progress?

Mountains, Christians and Sheep

When my family came back to N. Ireland from Australia, I was only six, but had already acquired a strong Australian accent. My parents claim that I went off to play in our village, Dungiven and came back the same day with a Derry accent. It wasn’t the only thing I did on that first day in N.I. I also fought every girl on the street. Okay, I lost a few fights but overall I had felt good about the whole day. One had to settle in and it was best to test out one’s environment, early on. After all the pushing and sizing up had ended, one girl asked me, ‘Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?’ Hedging carefully so as not to appear stupid, I said, ‘which are you?’ She said she was Catholic and then persisted ‘What are you?’ Genuinely confused, I asked what a Catholic was. It was a religion, I was told. This I understood, and answered the original question, relieved at last to know the answer, ‘I’m a Christian’. This was met with much mirth. The girls who gathered around said that they were Christians too. I pointed out that they had said they were Catholic not Christian. It was then carefully explained that Catholics and Protestants were both Christian. This was news indeed, to me. I’d never heard of Catholics and Protestants and yet gathered that this matter was of considerable importance here, for some reason.

Later I asked my Father about it and he seemed very weary as he explained it all. From that day I understood about Catholics and Protestants. I lost my accent and discovered I was a Protestant. At that age you wanted to know such things; not knowing seemed much too vulnerable. As I grew up in Dungiven, I never felt a real Protestant. We never joined the young farmers club or the parades on the twelfth of July. Daddy seemed to have left all that stuff behind him when he emigrated, and didn’t really want to pick it up when he came home. He certainly didn’t seem to want to hand it all on to us kids and although we always felt outsiders to both sides of the community, it also gave us a funny sense of freedom as well. Religion isn’t about prejudices, or practices even, it’s about finding God. I remember every Sunday we would discuss religion at home. My eldest brother refused to go to church. He said God was a bit like climbing a mountain. There were loads of ways up, but the less things you tried to take with you, the quicker you got there. In his view joining a bunch of fellow climbers, i.e., a church, was fatal as instead of keeping your eye on the peak you kept noticing if you were higher or lower than those with you. Even worse, he said, was the way in which you could actually be lost, but follow sheep-like the flock for security. I liked the way he looked at things, thought things out, and the fact that he disagreed with everyone else on principle! When you are an outsider you can afford to be different and disagree; it’s one of the pluses. In a culture where everyone has a tendency to worry about what everyone else thinks of them, being out of it gives you an immense feeling of lightness. It’s as if everyone is carrying a load and each is checking everyone else’s load to see which side they are on. When you decide to chuck your load away, it’s such a relief. You see, thirty years on, I think when I was six I gave the right answer to that original question, but its taken a long time for me to realise it.

And What is Your Cage?

Sometimes in life we are where we don't want to be.  A place we didn't choose with people that bring pain not gain.  Gradually, we can become a person we never meant to be.   At such times we feel such a longing to be who we were meant to be.  Breaking free of that cage is a hard process but we all have just one life, no rehearsals allowed. 

And What is Your Cage?

Jane was a slight woman with a nervous twitching face. Her emotions seemed out of control and her facial features changed like the flickering of a bulb that is about to go out. Kindness then suspicion then a wary unguarded look followed by a look of triumphant glee and then a completely miserable expression would take its place. Each fleeting look would only be there for an instant, just long enough for you to register the expression, begin to react to it, and then it would be gone. If this were not enough her body was equally tense and ill at ease. She would be sitting on the sofa then she would stalk around to make a dramatic point, her arms gesturing wildly. Her feet dancing like a thoroughbred horse on the carpet as if anxious to be somewhere else. The whole impression was of a person who had lost track of their real self and like a projector gone wild, simply vibrated with random motion.

Jane is a friend of my friend Karen. My contact with her had been spasmodic. Karen had mentioned her a few times and I’d gathered Jane had marital problems. Then one day things had reached a climax and Karen had turned up on my doorstep with Jane beside her. Jane’s husband had thrown her and the two children out of the house. She had been taken in by a neighbour but was in a terrible state. Shaking with emotion she recounted what had happened. Her husband was having an affair, not unusual here in Greece, but he also wanted his freedom and had for some time.

So for the past five years his strategy had been to make Jane leave him. He had gradually become more and more cruel as his intention was continually foiled by Jane’s long-suffering devotion. Even now when she described his latest attack, between her tears she admitted that she still, even now, loved him. He had damaged her arm and she’d had to go to hospital. He’d offered her half of their shop, in the town, if she gave him their daughter. He didn’t want the boy, as he looked like his mother! Only the daughter! When that didn’t work he attempted to have her certified incompetent by some doctor friends of his.

Karen had taken Jane to a solicitor for advice, as things had become so traumatic. Unfortunately this had been reported to Jane’s husband and he had phoned Karen and threatened her. After he had finished Karen phoned me in tears dreadfully upset. He’d even threatened to come to her children’s school and create a scene, telling everyone that Karen was crazy. It seemed the appropriate explanation for him that anyone who did anything he disproved of must be crazy. Karen had brought Jane to us and as she paced and fidgeted and quivered with emotion I felt a deep sadness. Karen whispered to me, “she never used to be like this. Living with him has changed her, she used to be so calm”. There was a sweetness about Jane even now. She was Swiss and at first her Greek husband had been everything she sought. They lived here in Greece but had spoken German in their home for the first five years of their marriage. Gradually he had instigated changes. Only Greek could be spoken now. Criticisms grew over the way she looked, the cleanliness of the house, the food she prepared. Nothing was good enough. It all sounded frighteningly familiar to me. Another friend of mine had been married to a similar case. He had been so loving, so kind, but after the wedding his behaviour had gradually changed. It began with words. How fat she looked. How could she say such stupid things in front of others? Why was the house such a mess etc. etc. At the end of eight years when he actually started hitting her, she felt she really deserved it! The depletion of her own self-worth had been gradual but with daily drip feeds of acidic comments she too became convinced of her low station. However, Jane’s parents were coming from Switzerland in a matter of days for two weeks holiday. It seemed good news in the midst of a life torn with arguments, bitterness and awful moods.

Unfortunately her husband, true to form, threw her parents out of the house and cursed them dreadfully. They fled back to Switzerland where I reckon Jane’s husband thought they would take her as well. Jane didn’t go she stayed. Karen doesn’t talk to her anymore. She’s angry that Jane is back playing happy families. Jane’s husband bought her a beautiful vase as an apology for his behaviour. Jane accepted his apology and his vase. Karen says she can’t stand it any more. Three years of being the shoulder to cry on has been enough. So Jane is more alone than ever with one friend less and her family in Switzerland totally bemused.

Yesterday when I was standing in the school Assembly someone came up and put their hands over my eyes from behind. I turned and it was Jane. Bouncing from one foot to the other, expressions fleeing across her face in succession. What has happened to the real Jane, what will she become, what does the future hold? I see a desperation, a loneliness behind all the movement and I pray that sweet Jane finds an easier path.

Here in Rhodes people keep birds in cages. They like the beautiful sound they make, singing to the sky beyond the bars. It seems strange that their owners don’t realise most of a bird’s beauty is in its ability to fly. Not surprising then that people too, having captured the thing they love, bind it, cage it, make it into something else, then cease to love it at all.

Breasts, silicon and Stuff!

Okay this one will not go down well with most people but I remember it all well and can't help smiling when I think back to it all.

The Steed of This Valley is Pain

My friend Anna was exhausted and drained when she stepped into my car carefully, protecting her sore side, and finding it difficult to manage her handbag and the door handle at the same time.  She had had her breast removed along with her glands under her arm the weekend before and, although healing well, was still coping with the shock and pain of it all.  It had only been two weeks previously that she had been blissfully unaware of any health problems.  Everything had happened so terrifyingly quickly and coping was the order of the day.  She had decided to only tell close friends and had been hurt by some of the reactions.  One friend had phoned a day later in tears saying she couldn’t afford to lose Anna as she was one of her few friends on the island.  The selfishness of that thought hurt.  As did the endless tales of others who had also had cancer.  One middle-aged lady had told her that they had buried a thirteen-year-old neighbour the week previously who had died of cancer and the family had buried her hair with her.  Confused Anna had asked, "Sorry, her hair?" And the response came, "Yes, you know she lost it all during the chemotherapy and they had kept the hair as it fell out, so they buried it with her, so sad”.  What bewildered Anna was the reason this lady had felt compelled to share this anecdote with someone who had herself been just diagnosed with cancer.  Was it hurtfulness or insensitivity? 

But people respond to situations differently and often they say or do the wrong thing but mean no harm.  Illness and death are somehow taboo and not many of us are trained in how to handle either with grace or wisdom.  One elderly Greek neighbour had fallen from the balcony of their second floor flat onto the cement below and was lying bleeding on the ground while relatives ran screaming around the road and waving their arms in the air.  While the ambulance was on its way one relative got into his car and frantically tried to do a U-turn and instead crashed into a nearby tree leaving a huge dent in his car.  Meanwhile the elderly husband howled in clear Greek something to the effect that his wife was dead and who would look after him now.  At the time I had wanted to hit him on the head with a shovel for his tactlessness but in hindsight the reason the grandson crashed the car was the great desire to do something to help.  The husband only said what he said probably because his wife was the most important thing in his life and the thought of losing her terrifying. 

But it is no conciliation to the poor sufferer who not only has to cope with the pain and loss but also the seeming stupidity of everyone around them.  As Anna leaned back in the car seat she sighed with exhaustion and I asked, ‘where do you want to go?’  ‘Home’, she murmured and we headed off to her house a few miles along the coast. She’d come to town by bus to see her doctor, had become too tired, and so had phoned me to pick her up from the town.  As we travelled she told me about her day.  Her doctor had told her of a chemist in Rhodes which sold false breasts and had phoned them before Anna’s visit to explain what she needed.  When she’d reached the chemist it had been full of people and, in front of everyone, the owner had, in a loud voice, started explaining that Anna was too small.  Her breast size was size one and they only stocked from size four and up.  In tones implying below that size there wasn’t much point.  If she wanted to order a silicon one however it would cost 45,000 drahmas( approx eighty pounds).  All of this was done at the top of his voice. Foreigners are often thought to only understand Greek if you shout, and to her horror Anna burst into tears.  In a chemist full of strangers, she cried and cried, partly from frustration, partly from embarrassment, but mostly from grief and loss.  A part of her had been taken away and only she was really aware of how much that hurt.  I was furious and upset at the insensitivity of the chemist.  What a berk.  Just imagine him being so thoughtless. 

I was mentioning this event to another friend of mine, an English girl, called Lisa.  Lisa is from the north, a real Yorkshire lass, with an accent that feels like a bread and butter marmite sandwich.  Sometimes when I get homesick here in Greece, just listening to her accent can bring a comfort.  She’s also fearless and can curse most wonderfully in fluent Greek.  Once when we were in the supermarket we returned to her car to find some thoughtless driver had blocked it in.  So there we stood with groceries and small children, stuck because some idiot had double-parked.  When the driver eventually returned he spotted two foreign women and gave us a dismissive wave before jumping in his car.  My Greek is non- existent in such circumstances.  But fortunately Lisa’s is not and she let rip.  The poor guy was pole axed.  He actually went pale and I began to feel quite sorry for him.  He learned a valuable lesson that day as he apologised most profusely and grovelled most satisfyingly.  It helps that Lisa is tall and a former policewoman who you feel sure could put an arm lock on you and frog march you across the channel tunnel if she felt inclined.  I made the mistake of mentioning the chemist incident to her and she was outraged.  She was also proactive.  She started a campaign against the chemist. 

She got her many Greek relatives involved and even more foreign women married to Greeks on the island.  She went in and asked to see the largest silicon penis he had.  Not only that but all her accomplices did the same.  Even some relatives who live in a village 8 km from Rhodes got involved.  People that I thought far too respectable to dream of saying penis in public went to the poor chemist and did the deed.  By the time I had worked up courage to do it, he had been polite and yet insistent, ’No we don’t stock penis’s, who told you we did?’  Next week the tourist season began and tourists will do anything for a laugh.  A bunch of Dutch ladies staying at a friend’s hotel thought it a terrific gag and told some others.  A Finnish lady on a week’s holiday waited until her last day before requesting a penis in heavily accented English.  Somehow the thing just snowballed from there. 

Greek friends in Archangelos, a village on Rhodes, heard of the challenge and went to request in their distinctive Greek accents ‘the largest silicon penis you stock’.  It became a symbol of revolution among the youth, who I have to say, were the only group who managed to rope in both boys and girls.  Until they took over it had been a purely female resistance movement.  It was several months later when an unusual sign appeared on the chemist’s counter.  A discrete typewritten sign sellotaped to the till read ‘We do not stock silicon penis’s’.  Anna had just received the all clear from her tests and news of this and the note spread like wildfire.  Lisa was triumphant and the rest of us crowed in contentment.  Such a silly thing.  We who all know the story have a peculiar fondness for that sign and take obscure pleasure from its presence.  A symbol of resistance in difficult days and a moment of shared fun during a tough period.