60 Minutes Archive – dog intelligence

Some years ago, I tried to teach Bass, our dog, to read.

I failed.

Our dog is not a good reader. But in other ways, he’s a sharp guy. You can bribe him with treats. Always. He does lots of tricks that entertain the family and visitors..what they don’t realise is no treat, no trick.

Once, he used to line up his toys in rows on the carpet, but he doesn’t seem to do that anymore. His favourite toy is his grey corduroy elephant. He has only five left in different states of tatters. The others have gone to elephant heaven. If you say “Fetch your elephant” he does.

He has strong likes and dislikes, which he indicates by facial expression. And he disciplines his humans in the same way. If we misbehave, like going to bed late, or not opening the back door for his excellence’s last pee at night, he gives us ‘the look’. If we are not sitting watching TV by lunch time, he call-barks, which is different from a bark.

He loves clean linen, especially if it’s white and newly placed – anywhere.

He has so many different quirks, behaviours, interpersonal instructions and communications, I cannot count the ways. He is the most entertaining dog we have ever had. He will be our last dog. It’s good that the last dog has been the best, yes?

Who cares if he cannot read!

Helter Skelter for Powerchairs

Yesterday’s trip out on Milly was terrifiying.

I went alone on Millie to suss out the old walk I used to do with Bass, the dog.

Once, about two years ago, I used to take Bass along the Canal Path daily, where he could be set loose and run free. He used to chase squirrels and rats, though he never caught any, and get well excercised. Our walks would be about a mile and a half. Nowadays the lady over our road takes him with her dogs which she walks daily.

There is a long ramp going down to the canal path. I have seen powerchairs and mobility scooters going up and down it.

But I am learning about powerchairs (electric wheelchairs) because they are different to mobility scooters. They have castor wheels in the front as manual wheelchairs do. The castor wheels allow the chair to do amazing things, turn on a farthing, manoevre in tiny spaces, climb and turn.

But

castor wheels are controlled by gravity, gradient. So there is no “spontenaiety” on going out in a wheelchair. You can’t just say “Oh, lets go to that new restaurant, coffee shop, business centre, park, cinema, or whatever. You need to suss out the joint first to see what obstacles you might encounter. And powerschairs are ABSOLUTELY USELESS in snow and ice.

So

I went to suss out the Canal Path.

There were leaves on the ramp. Wet leaves. I have not seen any videos of what happens to powerchairs on ramps covered with wet leaves. But I will tell you now.

At the beginning, you find yourself sliding into a pile of cleared wet leaves almost as high as your neck which have collected to the right of the entrance. Alarmed, you wonder if you should phone your husband, but then you find if you push with your feet with your chair in reverse, you can get out back onto the cleared area which has only a few wet leaves on it. But then when you brake, you slide into the sturdy wooden fence post, and the castor wheels flip you, unrequested, onto the main ramp.

At which point,

all hell breaks loose.

You descend at break-neck speed, uncontrolled by your joystick or brakes, until you reach the large puddle at the bottom and have to simply sit there shaking, disorientated, wet, terrified, shocked.

Thinking.

Thinking “Thats what happens on Ice – I saw it on the videos, and ALSO on ramps with wet leaves”

No one speaks about wet leaves on gradients. But my castor wheels decided to teach me a lesson. I know now.

And so do you!

Stabbed in the back

We bought a power chair (aka electric wheelchair, aka electric chair).

They have joysticks, not handlebars.

A joystick is a euphemism for pretending driving your power chair is fun.

A joystick is a beastly little thing that responds to the slightest touch, even breathing!

And fear.

Millie, the power chair, is so sensitive, and her driver so fearful, that we go out together regularly to ‘practise’. ‘Practise’ is a euphemism for intense stress. It consists of me clutching onto the power chair arms, jaws clenched, eyeballs straining to detect bumps, camber, pedestrians, walls, hedges, on ramps, off ramps all the while steering with a “joy” stick.

We arrive home and my shoulders and upper back are clamped closed in a spasm of terror.

Recently I added a cushion to Millie. It was an error. The cushion changed the angle of my back. Far from being more comfortable, it caused a muscle cramp for several days that felt as if I had a knife between my shoulder blades.

Today, at last, there is better weather. Millie and I and the dog Bass, are going out.

Bass, Millie and I already had a ‘practise’ run.

I am hoping I won’t stab myself in the back again.

Or run over the dog.

Facing facts

Sometimes facts are so huge, you have to face them.

The fact is, currently, I am not overcoming Spinal Stenosis – lateral spinal stenosis actually – every step I take hurts.

The fact is, currently, I am not overcoming Gluconeogenesis – my body makes blood sugar all by itself without me eating sugar, carbs, or even anything at all.

In 1980 when my baby was hardly a month old, I had a post partum stroke. It’s not uncommon – but people don’t seem to know about them. That stroke made my left side “weak” as the family doctor euphemistically described it. As the hospital medics ran down the underground corridor with my trolley flashing past overhead strip lighting, I heard a nurse shout to those ahead, ” Move over! We have a stroke victim here!”

Until that moment, I did not know. Stroke victim? Me?

I remember overwhelming rage that an ‘old-people’ thing was happening to ME – at age thirty-six. But the fact was so huge, I just had to accept it. Some of the best times of my life have happened since then. Very few people have ever asked me what happened to me even though I’m very obviously “weak” on my left side.

Fast forward. Today’s spine problem has been complicated by my stroke. Too much “weak” has left its mark for my current old age to deal with.

Why my body keeps on making blood sugar is a mystery. The diabetic nurse was pleased with my HbA1c (or is that hBa1C? Or possibly Hba1c? I forget). I have been on a strict Carnivore Diet for nine months. The Carnivores say “Dont worry about it, it will stop some day”, the diabetic nurse says ” Dont worry about it, your body obviously needs it”

Why would my body make blood sugar because “It needs it”, except? except?

To deal with this infernal PAIN?

BBC offers something good SAS Rogues.

Nowadays, have you noticed, BBC productions stick to a format?

I think it’s called “Inclusion”. All boxes have to be ticked in any one story…..

1. gay or trans character. Any LGBTQIA mixture.
2. disabled character.
3. strong woman, liberated woman.
4. Black person, family, preferably mixed race

I tick them off as we go along.

And they are there in the Series SAS Rogue Heroes, but in a more subtle fashion than usual.

SAS Rogue Heroes is well worth watching. You’ll find it on BBC I Player.

And the most impressive part is that it’s BRITISHNESS reminds us of how remarkable our ancestors were in the fight for freedom that now we all take for granted.

Worthwhile and not worthwhile TV old and new

These old Furlongs binge watch TV.

Right now, we are waiting to finish the brilliant series “Babylon Berlin”. The last two episodes air tonight. If you can handle subtitles and having to scrutinise series reviews in English, Babylon Berlin is an absolute treasure of information on life in 1929 and 1930s Berlin. It reveals how German pride became subsumed into Hitler’s ideology and how imperceptibly everyone was captured by it. The makers have generated faultless authenticity. And the corruptions of Industry, Police, Politics and Power are Historically correct.

On the other hand…..

For people who were fans of Raymond Burr who portrayed the original Perry Mason, the new Perry Mason is a shock. I’m the Perry Mason fan. I watched half of the new Series, episode 1 and was horrified. The new Perry Mason is a foul-mouthed, scruffy, creature living in a hovel. Without dignity, without ‘style’. And the image left in me, was the scene a short way in, of him copulating with who-know-who on his little single bed placed against the flimsy wall. Two naked people banging away lustfully, unaware they are in danger of falling onto the floor, or crashing through the wall are not part of the plot, surely, but simply a fetish of the scriptwriter.

Both Babylon Berlin and Perry Mason are set at the same time in History. There is plenty of sex in Babylon Berlin. I’m not against sex.

But somehow the new Perry Mason series, seems crass and course.True Hollowwood.

Despite not being able to discern the actual plot of Episode 1, which seemed scattered and messy, I will attempt to watch Episode 2.

Maybe the real Perry Mason will shine through. But to me this Perry Mason Series is simply another embodiment of New Think befouling old ideas of virtue and restraint which is unfashionable nowadays.

A pain in the ****

My body is giving trouble. That’s not surprising seeing after my last baby I had a postnatal stroke. I was left ‘weak’ on the left side. ‘Weak’ is a euphemism for being semi-paralysed. I compensated. I compensated for 42 years. I am the crooked woman.

But now I am the crooked woman with a pain in the arse caused by lateral spinal stenosis. I seem to be able to do just about every movement, except taking a step or stand comfortably.

I have a referral to a Spinal Neurosurgeon. In my future. Sometime in the mysterious National Health Service future. Somewhere. Sometime.

In the meantime, I am trapped by the amount of walking distance I have to do on an outing. No strolling around shops, garden centres, castle gardens, or streets. Our neighbour walks Bass, the dog.

We bought a very nice, inexpensive ‘powerchair’. ‘Powerchair’ is a euphemism for an electric chair, who’s connotations are not good. I have called her Millie after the mobility scooter my mother owned. Millie is a she, obviously, and her pronouns are she, her.

She has a joystick which is necessary because I can drive her with the hand that works and I’m not clutching onto handle bars like you find with mobility scooters. And she turns on her own footprint. I can turn her in our flat’s passage. But joysticks are much harder to control.

You have to practise. Practise makes perfect.

The biggest problem currently is the weather. I never get ‘out’. I’m sick of practising by turning around in the passage. I can negotiate here, inside. I need open spaces that seem daily to be shrouded in the mist and rain. Open spaces would be nice sometime in my future, and just about as terrifying as the mysterious Spinal Neurosurgeon lurking there.

Sun for a day!

We had sun for a day, all day, except for a sudden shower at lunchtime.

It was so amazing, I dashed out into the Furlong garden and weeded and swept up leaves. It felt good!

I was in the UK in 1974. In the news was the fact that the UK had added a new ‘place’ on the map. It was an area called ‘Cumbria’. Such a lot of talk about ‘Cumbria’! I asked “Where is this ‘Cumbria'”?

A man told me to drive around England and when I found a thick layer of cloud, to continue under it and I would have found Cumbria!

Never in my widest dreams did I imagine I would be here, living out my old age under the shelf of cloud.

Clouds are needed to make rain. Lots if it makes the Lake District. It must be one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

Am I lucky?

Well yes. We had a day of sunshine.

Well no. It’s raining again today!

Bah humbug old age sucks

There is a time when you absolutely realise, unequivocably, without doubt, definitely and inargueably, that you are old.

That time, for me is now.

Today.

When you see the future as pointless, brutal and entropic and you probably haven’t enough money to pay for someone to wipe the dribbles up or bring you gruel in a container other than a bowl because you will spill, or hold your arm as you shuffle to the loo, and you dread the fact that your carer might have to be your beloved partner, and you don’t want any of that to happen, then that’s the day old age hits you.

And worse, that you have not the strength to be a carer for anyone else.

So YOU are the one that despite not wanting to, might end up a toothless, decrepit, lump of bones that has to be shuffled about by someone else!

I tell you, readers, old age SUCKS.

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