Al Magaw

The Future

June 13, 2010 by teamineka

The Future

By Al Magaw

The dogs and other animals that ran for the hills before the tsunami in the south seas present an interesting situation – for 100’s of years there have been reports of strange behavior from dogs, and other animals, before earth quakes – the earth quake and subsequent under water land slide that caused the tsunami were far from where the giant wave hit – certainly far enough that the earth quake itself would have caused little damage to any habituated land, yet somehow the animals seemed to know that the tsunami was coming. The dogs didn’t bark and show their usual behavior that seems to be normal before an earth quake, and the cats didn’t just hide. They all ran for the hills.

I’ve had a few incidents in my own yard that still cause me to wonder.

“Argus” was a rock solid leader. He had the toughest head of any dog I’ve ever had the opportunity to deal with. Only once in his racing career did he ever refuse to lead a team out of the dog yard or race start chute. One morning I was running a team with 3 promising yearlings mixed in with some experienced dogs. I put Argus up in lead to hold the line out while I hooked up the rest of the dogs. This one morning, Argus refused to hold the line out. I would pull him back up and tell him to stay and he would just turn and try to run back to the kennel. Finally, I put Argus in wheel, and put “Pepsi”, the most promising yearling and another yearling in lead with the third promising yearling at single point. We left the start chute with no other problems. Pepsi and the other yearling set a good fast pace as we wound through the twisty section that comprises the first section of my training trail. As we turned onto the dike that borders the river, a pickup truck came speeding out of nowhere and ran over the front of the team, killing the 3 yearlings at the front of the team. The pickup was being driven by a teenager that had stolen it from his stepfather and gone for a joy ride. To be able to get the remaining team back home, I had to put Argus in lead. Argus showed no hesitation at that point to line the team out. He never ever refused again to leave the start chute. Did Argus have a premonition of the deadly accident?

My little border collie “Quick” never follows the teams out of the start chute, but will scold a dog that has screwed up out on the trail when we get back from a run. Not only does she seem to know what happened out on the trail, she’ll sometimes scold a dog before the run starts. That dog will screw up somewhere during the run. Are the dogs telling each other what they are planning to do in the future or is Quick having a premonition?

There are many stories of dogs getting excited about their owner coming home minutes or even hours before their owner arrives. It’s common enough that scientific tests have been done to see if the response is a reliable one. Unfortunately, the results were inconclusive.

Do dogs, and perhaps other animals, have an advanced sense of premonition? Like so many of their enhanced instincts, do they have a reliable means of seeing what the immediate future holds? Some humans have premonitions at times and some have them more often. They are often considered to be crazy, but crazy or not, some have reliable premonitions. Is this another area where humans have let an animal instinct wither from lack of use – it makes a person wonder.

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Al Magaw is a musher from Salmo, BC. Al keeps a medium sized kennel of 20 – 45 alaskan huskies as well as several pet dogs of various breeds. Al has been training and racing for the last 33 years. Before becoming involved with sled dogs, Al, along with his family, kept and competed with horses for many years. Al can be reached through his website at http://www.spiritofthenorthkennels.com Al is a guest blogger for Denver Dog Works and can be reached through our website at http://www.denverdogworks.com

Predictions by Al Magaw

June 6, 2010 by teamineka

Predictions

By Al Magaw

“On December 26, 2004, an earthquake along the floor of the Indian Ocean was responsible for a tsunami that claimed the lives of thousands of people in Asia and East Africa. In the midst of all the destruction, wildlife officials at Sri Lanka’s Yala National Park have reported no mass animal deaths. Yala National Park is a wildlife reserve populated by hundreds of wild animals including elephants, leopards, and monkeys. Researchers believe that these animals were able to sense the danger long before humans.There has been no conclusive evidence as to how animals may be able to sense earthquakes. Some researchers believe the animals at Yala National Park were able to detect the earthquake and move to higher ground before the tsunami hit, causing massive waves and flooding. ” (copied from various news sources)

Reports of strange behavior from animals were common prior to the tsunami – (the tsunami was caused by an underwater landslide that in itself was caused by an earthquake)

The belief that animals can predict earthquakes has been around for centuries.

In 373 B.C., historians recorded that animals, including rats, snakes and weasels, deserted the Greek city of Helice in droves just days before a quake devastated the place.

Accounts of similar animal anticipation of earthquakes have surfaced across the centuries since. Catfish moving violently, chickens that stop laying eggs and bees leaving their hive in a panic have been reported. Countless pet owners claimed to have witnessed their cats and dogs acting strangely before the ground shook—barking or whining for no apparent reason, or showing signs of nervousness and restlessness.

There have also been examples where authorities have forecast successfully a major earthquake, based in part on the observation of the strange antics of animals. For example, in 1975 Chinese officials ordered the evacuation of Haicheng, a city with one million people, just days before a 7.3-magnitude quake. Only a small portion of the population was hurt or killed. If the city had not been evacuated, it is estimated that the number of fatalities and injuries could have exceeded 150,000.” (copied from National Geographic )

Research into this phenomena is “being held back not because of lack of money but dogmatism and narrow-mindedness” according to one expert

My own belief is that for phenomena like this to be understood, the mindset of 2 + 2 = 4 has to be forgotten and minds have to open to the idea that there are other things happening in the universe that can not be explained by conventional scientific thinking or religious beliefs.

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Intuition vs. Images

May 30, 2010 by teamineka

Intuition vs. Images

By Al Magaw

We have all met those people, often women, who have an uncanny intuition for reading other people, developing trust or reservations almost instantly. It’s uncanny how often people who have a good intuition make a correct assessment. After making many mistakes in my life, some serious, some not so serious, I’ve learned to trust my own faint semblance of intuition more than I used to. I realise now that the slight feeling of apprehension that I had felt in various situations was closer to the truth than what my brain, while weighing the more obvious evidence, evidence gained through the normal senses, had figured it was. How this works, I have no idea, but there are few arguments that would dispute that there is such a thing as intuition.

Dogs, and other animals, have developed a method of communication that uses no sounds, no motions, and no visible clues as to how it works. It’s very mysterious, and there is very little hard scientific evidence available to confirm it, yet virtually every pet owner that is close to their pet has stories of how their dog, cat, horse, etc, has shown a remarkable ability to know what it’s owner, with no apparent signal being given, is going to be doing or wants from his pet. There are some, including this author, that believe dogs communicate through their ability to read and send images – a question that presents itself to me is this, “Is our intuition linked in some way to an animal’s ability to communicate through images”? There are certainly some demonstrable comparisons.

“Gramma” insists that someone is a bad person after meeting them for the first time and only for a few moments at that. It’s a scenario that is common enough and accurate enough to get a laugh.

We’ve all seen or heard of the normally friendly dog that all of it’s life had greeted everyone with a wagging tail, that suddenly wouldn’t let a stranger out of their vehicle. One of my own dogs was normally a wuss in his day to day life, friendly to everyone, yet one day when a pickup drove into the yard with two men in it, he objected to one of the men in the truck. “Ozzie” didn’t mind that the driver got out of the truck and came to the door, but he insisted the passenger not set foot on the ground. “Ozzie” was a Shropshire terrier, all black, with large, very white teeth, and with teeth showing and the hair on his back all bristled up, no one was going to argue with him. Why did Ozzie object to the passenger and not the driver? It couldn’t have been the truck or he would have objected to both men. Was the man in the truck imaging some sort of harm?

A lady I know, had one of her Alaskan Huskies chained in the back of her pickup when she stopped to give a hitchhiker a ride. The man was no sooner in the pickup than the woman realized there was something wrong with him, an intuition that the man could be a threat. The sliding rear window was open, and somehow the big dog, “Zeus”, hampered by being tied in the back of the pickup, was able to wiggle in through the open sliding rear window and plant himself firmly between passenger and driver.

In all of the above cases there was no reasonable, no discernible, reason to come to the conclusion that they came to, dog, Gramma or lady driver, yet we have to assume there was some sort of communication before any of them could come to the conclusion that they did. Does intuition and silent, image based communication come from the same source, the same instinct? Does the evidence of other inherited instincts from our animal fore-bearers also include the ability, though faded, to understand images coming from a fellow human or some other creature? Is the dog’s heightened awareness a super strong intuition? I don’t have the answers to these questions, but the evidence causes me to ask them.

We rely so much on eyesight, hearing, and touch, that we’ve lost much of what it takes to understand other possible ways of communicating. Because we don’t understand something, or can’t see, hear, or feel it, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t so.

Do you have a remarkable story about one of your dogs? Contact us at live@dogdoctorradio.com We would love to hear from you.

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Images by Al Magaw

May 23, 2010 by teamineka

Images

By Al Magaw

There had been a bear breaking into the shed where I keep dog food. No matter how I tried to board the shed up, the bear kept breaking in and helping itself to the dog food. To top it off, the bear was walking right through the dog yard, through the centre of some of the dog’s picket circles. The dogs seldom barked at the bear when it came through the kennel, and the only real signal the dogs gave when the bear came was the peculiar rattle they made with the chains. One afternoon, I heard the nervous rattle of the chains that indicated the bear was back. When I heard a yipe from a dog, I grabbed my rifle and headed to the dog-yard. I wasn’t going to put up with my dogs being mauled – dog food was one thing, my dogs were something else and I was going to do what I could to protect them. The bear heard me coming, I guess, because it scattered long before I could even aim the rifle, but it was the reaction of the dogs to me that surprised me. When I came around the corner into sight of the dogs, they all dove into their houses, a far cry from their usual reaction to my arrival in the dog-yard. This time I was a hunter, a predator. This wasn’t the “dad” they knew, this was danger! Normally I’m greeted with great enthusiasm in the dog-yard, but this time I was greeted with fear. The dogs had never seen the gun before, so they couldn’t have understood what it was, it had to be the images I was sending that created that fear. When I realised what was happening, I forced myself to relax. It took a few moments after I relaxed for the dogs to start tentatively stepping out of their houses and a few more minutes before they were confident that I was “OK” before they resumed the normal behavior that they have around me.

It was early fall and we were into a full regular training schedule, 4 days a week, two days on, one day off, two days on, two days off. Rain or shine, mud or dry land, I felt the schedule had to be kept. The dogs were coming along well, enthusiastic to run and conditioning nicely. One morning when I left the house to travel the 300 feet to the dog yard, the dogs all hid in their houses. I wondered “what the heck???” then I stopped to “look” inside of myself, what I was feeling inside. It was then I realised I was in a bad mood, for whatever reason, I was feeling out of sorts. The dogs had felt that from 300 feet away. I decided it was not a good day for training and went back to the house. There is something very powerful in the ability of animals to feel, sense, or “see” what we feel, our moods, our faults, and who knows what else.

Do you have a remarkable story about one of your dogs? Contact us at live@dogdoctorradio.com We would love to hear from you.

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Cylus by Al Magaw

May 16, 2010 by teamineka

Cylus

By Al Magaw

This is an exerpt from the chapter “Cylus” from my unpublished book , tentatively titled, “Best Friends”

Cylus was my first leader, an obedience dog, intelligent, all heart, and full of bounce – we think he was a Collie/Aussie cross. Cylus was a last minute rescue from euthanasia when he was ten months old – this story took place when Cylus was four or five years old and he and I had shared many things together.

One evening, my wife Carol was putting our kids to bed, and I was playing with Cylus in the living room. I was getting ready to have him do some of his tricks, but he wasn’t waiting for me to give the command. He would do the trick as soon as the idea entered my head. I stopped and wrote down a series of tricks that Cylus knew. I called Carol to come and see what was going on. I asked her to watch to see if I was unconsciously giving any signals by my body language. I silently read the first trick on the list. Cylus did the trick. We went through the whole list. Cylus did each trick in the order that I silently read them . I was not aware of giving any signal at all, and Carol could see no motion on my part. It was so eerie, that it sent shivers up our spines…

While driving home from work one evening I hit a deer on the highway. I wasn’t hurt, but the deer was dead and the truck was not drivable. I was able to catch a ride home with the next following vehicle. I arrived home to find that some friends had come to visit. Everybody was sitting around the living room having a pleasant conversation. Cylus was on the floor beside Carol. I sat in my usual chair and listened for a few minutes to catch on to what the conversation was about. When I did start to say something, I didn’t have more than two words out of my mouth, when Cylus started to moan and wail. He crawled towards me, belly down on the floor, this horrible moaning/wailing sound coming from deep in his throat. Carol asked, “What on earth is the matter with that dog?” I replied that I had hit a deer on the way home.

I didn’t think I felt particularly stressed, and I sure wasn’t hurt. But Cylus had picked up something in my voice and had reacted with a huge concern for my well being.

In my very first race, Cylus in single lead, at the crest of a hill, I couldn’t see where the trail went. Cylus, who was about thirty feet in front of me, facing away, felt my uncertainty. His head and his ears came up, he hesitated and slowed for a moment until I could see where the trail went. Immediately that I was confident that we were on the right track, his ears and his head went down and he was back to full speed ahead –

These are just a few examples of how that remarkable little dog seemed to live inside my head. Cylus lived to be 18-years old, and although he’s long gone these many years, I still miss him badly.

Do you have a remarkable story about one of your dogs? Contact us at live@dogdoctorradio.com We would love to hear from you.

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Al Magaw is a musher from Salmo, BC. Al keeps a medium sized kennel of 20 – 45 alaskan huskies as well as several pet dogs of various breeds. Al has been training and racing for the last 33 years. Before becoming involved with sled dogs, Al, along with his family, kept and competed with horses for many years. Al can be reached through his website at http://www.spiritofthenorthkennels.com Al is a guest blogger for Denver Dog Works and can be reached through our website at http://www.denverdogworks.com

Fox and Goose

May 9, 2010 by teamineka

Fox and Goose

By Al Magaw

One winter evening, my family and I watched seven, four-month old puppies play under the yard light in the snowy field in front of our house. The seven puppies followed each other around in a circle making a packed trail about 60 feet in diameter. Then they followed one another, single file, to make several paths that intersected the circle. The pattern made in the snow was indistinguishable from the circle that children make when they play the game, “Fox and Goose”. We were all crowded at the window, the lights in the house turned off so we could see better. We watched, at first in amazed silence, then with peals of laughter, and finally with disbelief of what we were seeing.

One puppy would take his place at the intersection of the crossed trails and the other six puppies evenly spaced themselves around the circumference of the circle. As if at a signal, the puppy in the centre dashed out the spoke of the wheel, turned onto the circle and grabbed a madly fleeing puppy by the tail. After a brief scuffle, the puppy that had been caught went to the centre of the circle. All of the puppies on the circle sat down facing the pup in the middle. They waited until the pup in the centre bolted to the outside circle. Again there was a mad dash around the circumference until another pup was caught. To our amazement, they played this game for about 3/4 hour, sticking rigidly to their self-imposed rules. I had never seen or heard of such behavior at the time we watched the puppies play Fox and Goose, but a few years laterI read in the National Geographic Magazine of a scientist observing the same behavior in a group of wolf pups.

We would love to hear your comments regarding this article. Please let us know at live@dogdoctorradio.com

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Al Magaw is a musher from Salmo, BC. Al keeps a medium sized kennel of 20 – 45 alaskan huskies as well as several pet dogs of various breeds. Al has been training and racing for the last 33 years. Before becoming involved with sled dogs, Al, along with his family, kept and competed with horses for many years. Al can be reached through his website at http://www.spiritofthenorthkennels.com Al is a guest blogger for Denver Dog Works and can be reached through our website at http://www.denverdogworks.com