Are Dogs Religious?

I think this dog may be expressing some skepticism on this topic, or at least the wisdom of discussing it.

First, the disclaimer: this isn't intended to be a post that's dismissive of religious belief at all.  I actually think that humans crave the answers to questions, and are genetically programmed to ask more and more and more of them. I don't have the answers to a lot of those questions, so if someone else believes they DO have those answers, who am I to question?

I don't think other animals are this way, generally, where something gets into their minds and they just HAVE to know about it. On the other hand, I do believe that animals think, they make connections between actions and results. They don't contemplate and are not very self aware, but they do apply brain power of some sort to the basic challenges of being alive, like getting enough food to stay that way.

Anyway, this line of thought started with my recent mild infatuation with tidying. That would never have come up if I was working, and didn't have time to think about anything much. That in turn got me thinking about animals that for some reason no longer have to spend their every waking moment hunting and gathering...like pets...or animals in zoos.

What's all the brainpower that those animals used to need for full time hunting and gathering (or avoiding being hunted and gathered) now being used for? I wonder if zoo animals ever think about where the food that appears in their cages comes from, or what makes it show up, or why it's better some days than others? They used to think about the conditions under which prey would be vulnerable, and how to catch it, or how to avoid being caught, so they have awareness of their environment and of course they care about getting food.

Ever see wolves in zoos, some other predators, ceaselessly repeating the same set of movements all day long? You know, trot along the fence to the corner, turn to the right to keep along the fence, get to the next corner, jump to the left and reverse direction, follow the fence back....you can see the grass all worn away along the fence from pacing. I always assumed they were gone mad, obsessively seeking a way out that countless attempts showed wasn't there.

Maybe what's really going on is one day early on they were checking out the fence when the keeper brought food. The same thing happened the next day, and some dim wolfy awareness of a connection between the keeper showing up with food and checking out the fence started to grow...a "belief" that if they pace, and maybe pace ju-u-u-st right, the guy will show up with food. Maybe if they never turn to the right when they reverse direction, the food will be tasty, not half vegetables. Maybe when it IS half vegetables, the wolf starts wondering whether it missed a turn back there somewhere.

Some dogs just comfortably assume the love of those that bring their food.

What about dogs, our title subjects? They're pack animals and dedicated to us as alpha pack members, but what do they think of our ability to produce food? If we miss a day or give them food they really dislike, or yell at them for no real reason, do they assume it's their fault, and start thinking about what they did wrong? They do a million tricks for food, is that their religion? - "I don't know how or when he catches the food, but I know he keeps it coming if I do this when he does that, and if I do it just perfect sometimes it's the really tasty kind of food".

Check out Cash, in the back:  "Have I somehow offended The Bringer of All Things? I must hang back, and abase myself completely."

I get that this may just be semantic somersaults around a specific definition of the word "religion", but given that humans are often passionate believers in things there's no definite proof of, I thought it was fun to wonder if animals also feel passionately about things they can't understand or "prove".

It's hard to look at that face and not think it's expressing gratitude for the comfy new bed he's in.  Okay, hard for me.  Caesar, wherever he is, might know Boo is considering an all-out lethal attack at this moment.

Cash in a rare moment of apparent confidence in his human benefactors.

One final, completely unrelated remark: The Weather Network says it's overcast in North Vancouver this morning.  I just took the picture below from the yard. If this is overcast I can't wait to see what "really bad weather" looks like....

Just look at all those looming thunderheads...

Golden Ears and Mt. St. Benedict

...or "This Is One Way To Figure Out If It's Time for New Trail Shoes".

The real purpose of today's post is to see whether I can figure out how to post a link to a video that ISN'T on YouTube, but my producers, investors, and PR people felt that wouldn't make much of a title. My second choice, above, didn't make the cut, either.

This is a link to a 3 minute video. Click on it - there will be a quiz.

Let's see whether that worked. Or if you watched the video. Or both.

Start with an easy one: What was the video about? There are some hints above.
How many kilometres are mentioned in the opening scene?
Which famous Rat Pack singer provides the musical support?

Okay, that's it. If you haven't been able to see it and have any vestige of interest in acing the quiz, better not read on, because the rest of this post is one big spoiler.

That hike was a week ago yesterday, and it was pretty epic in terms of time, distance, and suffering.  Fortunately it was also pretty epic in terms of scenery and company, in spite of the thick pall of smoke that obscured the view a bit even at the top.

A couple of posts back was the hike from two weeks ago, up Mt. Strachan. In that post, I concocted a theory trying to explain the absence of people in the 10-20 year old age range from the hiking trails.  The hike a week ago up Golden Ears peak put the lie to the theory, so now there's a new one: people in the 10-20 group only do really tough hikes, probably just to humiliate old people on the trail.

All the images and video I have of Golden Ears are in the linked movie. It was a long 23 km round trip, big elevation gain at about 1400 m, the "middle" 14 of those 23 km were without ability to add water, and the "middle" 6 of those 14 waterless km were like doing a 3k Grouse Grind up and then down; about 1100 of the 1400 m elevation change is in a 3 km stretch. It's the kind of hike that has an emergency shelter at one end of it. We had to stop, rest, eat, and have a long heart-to-heart with ourselves before completing the last half km to the shelter. The peak was another hour and kilometre past that, and looked pretty intimidating, and we felt okay about ourselves for not even considering it. A lot of people camp overnight before the hard part.

The views were pretty great and would have been fantastic without smoke. The food and beer we stopped and had on the way home were unbelievably super fantastic. In fairness, Kraft dinner would have been life-changing. My feet were sore the next day. I haven't thought seriously about hiking boots in 30+ years, til last week. I think the better solution is to just not do hikes like that.

The day before yesterday was the more moderate but surprisingly exhausting Mt. St. Benedict hike.  12 km round trip, 1000 m gain, took us about 4.5 hrs. The description we were working with was pretty tangled up, so we ended up driving and walking about 1.5 km of road that looked like this, only in reality it's way steeper, twice:


And it moved like this when we were on it, too.  Talk about tough.

The upper (off that road) trailhead was the big mystery, although this picture doesn't convey much of a sense of wonder, other than maybe "I wonder how I was ever supposed to notice that?":


See it, that kind of little break in the bushes?  Oh, all right, yes, it's well flagged and hard to miss, once you have decent instructions on how to get there.  Which we didn't have.

McKay Lake, at about the halfway point, does a better job looking wonderful:

This was the for-sure highlight of the day, McKay Lake. This picture was from Reiner Tecklenburg.  By the time we got up high, the clouds had got down, got funky.  They just would not get back up again.

We went steeply up from there, into the clouds, in fact. I hadn't ever really fully appreciated how wet the bushes and trees hanging over a trail can make you, nor how much the temperature can change with elevation, nor how useless a cotton hoodie is in those conditions, until this hike. Here are a couple of shots of the "view" from the top:

This is where the breath-taking view of something far, far below would have been on a clear day.  We got the danger part but not the exhilaration part.  We got the really, really wet part, too.



Again...I made this one large in case you can glimpse something through the fog, like maybe a Norse god.

That was it! Lots of hiking these past few weeks. Next post, possibly a return to my more esoteric ramblings.  Probably I should not forewarn you like that. 

First kid on my block...

Total change of pace today: this post is just only and simply about me being the first one to say that the current "crow riding on an eagle's back" thing is at best a very lucky piece of photograph timing and at worst a fake.

Background: some guy caught a series of photographs that purport to show a crow approaching, landing on, and then riding an eagle in flight.  When I look at the pictures and consider the possibility that any crow in its right mind could or would fold its wings and simply stand on the back of an eagle in flight, I say No - a thousand times no!  Even the eagle doesn't look right to me in these pictures....

Here's the initial place Rich sent to show me the pictures

Snopes, whose word on the truth or hoax status of everything is gold to me, apparently believes this is true.  Today, July 2nd, they cite Internet and email traffic " from July 2015" as validating this set of photos as authentic.

Here's the Snopes "analysis" that Rich also sent me.

....and here is a Google search on Internet traffic tending to validate this stuff, again provided by Rich.

I'm saying it's a hoax.

You can see how this went: Rich has done all the work and all I've had to do is be groundlessly obstinate in my disbelief.  If I turn out to be wrong, it'll be a little more humble pie, the earth continues spinning....meantime my potential upside on being the First Kid on My Block to call this out as a fraud is HUGE.

Thanks for listening.  As a reward for your patience, here is a picture of Blue Gentian Lake in West Vancouver, taken when Rich and I were hiking there on Canada Day (and arguing about eagles and crows.  Hey, this is how my days go by, and let me tell you, there are a lot worse ways to spend days...):

Blue Gentian Lake, July 1, 2015