Episode 7: A Sausage Dog's Love

My own significant other of the Canis lupus familiaris variety is here for her cameo appearance;

This is sausage face. Her face is not the sausage feature after which she is named but is merely the face of the attached body which is distinctly sausage like. Her official title is Belle-Feline but has other aliases such as sneaky, sausage face, sausage roll, belle the smell, creepy sneak and weasel features.

Generally everything she does is sneaky due to her weasel like nature. She enjoys scrounging for the tiniest of scraps with all of her efforts. And absolutely loves whatever it is you have.

Miniature Daschunds have been bred to have these distinctive features as it better enables them to hunt badgers down badger holes. Belle has recently developed a newer adaptation into converting these inbred skills into ‘bin hunting’. Distinctly more rewarding and less dangerous for ones sneaky face;

I am sure many people have come home to such things if not worse. So why do we even keep pets?

“Dogs have important jobs, like barking when the doorbell rings, but cats have no function in a house whatsoever.”
~ W. Bruce Cameron, A Dog's Purpose

There must be advantageous reasons why humans keep members of another species for an extended period of time purely for entertainment. Apart from a few inter-species friendships developed by animals in zoos, there is no conclusive evidence of this happening among any other animals in nature.

Here are a few contenders in the debate;

Religious – Keeping pets isn’t a modern phenomenon, as early as 3500BC animals were kept domestically by the ancient Egyptians. Dogs were revered as a symbol of the Jackal god Anubis. Cats were also worshipped religiously; they were esteemed as demi-gods and were property of the divine pharaoh.

Practicality – Moving through the ages it can be considered almost instinct to use animals for doing things we cannot do ourselves. For example, horses have a use in work for being used to pull carts for transportation of people and goods. Cats are also useful for controlling rodent populations.

There is also the obvious need of keeping animals like cattle, sheep, chickens and pigs for foodstuffs such as meat, eggs and milk.

Even in modern times animals have a practical arm in the everyday lives of many people like sheep dogs, guide dogs and sniffer dogs.

Status Symbol – Pets can be considered almost as a supreme ornament. Not very long ago only the wealthy could afford to have an extra mouth to feed. In developing countries now this is still obvious, people who can’t afford it do not introduce a furry member of the family for fun.

Exotic pets are also a status symbol of the good condition of your bank balance. Queen Elizabeth I had a Guinea pig, you didn’t just go and buy one in Pet World then, she was probably the owner of the only guinea pig in Britain at the time.

Although it isn’t entirely common now, in history, hunting for sport was a favourite past time of the upper classes. For this purpose they kept dogs, horses and of course game specifically for their entertainment.

Birds also have the X Factor for entertainment, having a delightful rowdy canary would be enjoyable before the invention of the radio!

Of course none of this really answers why 48% of homes in Britain, 20% of Japanese and 63% of American and Australian homes have at least one pet. People aren’t picking up all that poop for nothing!

“Dogs are the leaders of the planet. If you see two life forms, one of them's making a poop, the other one's carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge.”
~ Jerry Seinfeld

Psychological – Although anyone who has ever even seen one knows animals have feelings, humans are the only animals to have such a massive range of emotions linked to our consciousness.

Our desire to own and care for these creatures must be rooted in our emotions. It’s an absolutely simplistic answer but is just a simple fact, we have a pet because we love them and they love us back. Animals have shifted from food to friend.

No human on this earth is as unfailingly excited to see me when I come home as my Belly Belle.

Interestingly, animals respond better to sounds ending in ‘eeee’, probably explains why when I shout “BELLE-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” down the hall she comes bounding down like a prize horse in the Grand National.

Finally,

Having a pet around gives us a living presence that makes us feel comforted and wanted, they give all their time and affection without any ulterior motive, all for only the very basics of life in return. Also, dogs like to wag their tails and not their mouths which is an advantage over many human companions.  

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.”

~ Anatole France

 I will try to remind myself of this as I clear up the remainder of the bin contents from the floor...

You are nobody until somebody a sausage dog loves you.

Episode 5: Beauty and the Geek

Welcome to the Day of Love 2013!

Also known as singles awareness day.

Now by all means I should be spending the time alone playing World of Warcraft with some cyber friends a la Sheldon Cooper.  However, I have found a young gentleman who clearly just can’t get enough of the geek. So much so in fact that he sealed the deal a few months ago with an extremely old transparent crystal of tetrahedrally bonded carbon atoms aka a diamond.

Apart from the chemical classification of a diamond, what does science have to do with valentines and love? I’ll give you a multitude of reasons;

St. Valentine’s Day – So what’s it all about? The feast of St. Valentines can be attributed to a number of early Christian saints called Valentinus. Stories range from him being jailed for marrying soldiers to their sweethearts, who were forbidden to do so, to him writing to his own sweetheart during imprisonment. It has also been linked to the Roman feast of fertility Lupercalia. The most important theme throughout all the possibilities is the Romance.  It is the traditional day on which you put all else aside to express your love to those you hold dear. Most of these expressions of love will follow the traditional pattern;

Symbols of Valentine’s day;

Red Roses – The most common rhyme to find on Valentine’s Day starts ‘Roses are red...’ The rose was strongly linked to the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite and the Egyptian goddess of fertility, Isis. Because of this we have developed a very ancient link with red roses as a symbol of eternal love. It appears constantly in romantic literature;

“O MY Luve’s like a red, red rose,

That’s newly sprung in June:

O my Luve’s like the melodie,

That’s sweetly play’d in tune.”

~ Robert Burns

The colour red is longest and warmest ray in the visible light spectrum. It is likened to fire, power, life force and survival. It is the most energising colour and as such as linked to enormous passion. So psychologically both the flower and the colour are the most symbolic representations of the expression of love. However not all expressions of love are desirable, Kissing Disease for example. Your love might be contagious but it’s also infringing upon my immune system.

 Chocolate – For a more physical embodiment of science’s role in love; Aphrodisiacs. Although many aphrodisiacs are probably effective due to the placebo effect, a few actually can be chemically attributed with affecting passion. The King of aphrodisiacs has to be chocolate. It includes anandamine and Phenylethylamine (PEA) which are a psychoactive feel-good chemical and ‘love chemical’ respectively. PEA releases dopamine in the brain and can peak feelings of excitement, attraction and euphoria. It also contains tryptophan which is required for Serotonin production, another feel-good chemical of the brain.

Other foods with apparent aphrodisiac side effects include, asparagus, almonds, avocado, bananas, basil, figs, garlic, oysters and honey. Although links to these foods are probably more due to their actual vitamin and mineral content which are necessary for healthy reproductive systems than any psychological effect. Some of them are also obviously comically shaped...

So if you really want to express your love include these in your menu, a few appropriately placed oysters and champagne wouldn’t go amiss!

I of course included none of these. I’m making my Valentine Chicken wings, Seafood Paella, Pavlova and some Kopparberg because he told me they’re his favourite. No analysis required.

 

Clothing – And not necessarily lingerie you sneaks. A common way now to express love is dressing up and going out to dinner together. Don’t underestimate the power of a LRD (Little Red Dress), as we mentioned before the colour red ignites strong feelings. And he’s not going to take you to the Ritz dressed like a hobo on holiday.

Finally, if your Valentine’s day involved all these lovely expressions of eternal love you may be feeling;

In Love – I’m not even gonna go there. Although experiments show you can base how attracted you are to males on how different their MHC complex (immune system) is to yours [see the facts here - http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/14/5/668.full] we all know it’s just not like that. Unless you’re a crazy person, Science is going to leave that frontier well alone.

To fall in love you need to have the perfect mix of chemical and physical conditions... with a little bit of pixie dust... take the second star to the right and... head on into infinity and beyond...

Yeah. Disney is better at describing it than Science. Go watch Beauty and the Beast.