Hemmings On Dogs

HEMMINGS ON DOGS

Dogs are like children; you can not improve them with training, you can only make them worse. So to live at peace with your dog, do the minimum ‘training’ consistent with having them behave in a civilised manner. The following words should help.

Dogs (like children) are born with an innate desire to please. This is entirely natural; we feed them, exercise them, protect them, and, in any case, it is nicer to live in peace than at war. So if you let them know what you expect, they will practically always accommodate to your desires.

The problem is how to let them know what you desire. Because they can not speak does not mean they are stupid. They know immediately if you are angry, or happy, or concerned, or ill, or confused. So do not think you can fool your dog, it knows. "Good Dog" or "No" spoken firmly is really all you need to communicate clearly with your dog.

There ae two things of supreme importance to your dog; who is the boss and what are the rules/routines.

Your dog needs to know you are the boss. If you are not the boss, then the dog has to assume you want it to be the boss. It is very confusing for a dog to be the boss. Who are the enemy against whom he has to protect you, why do you not go walking with him when he wants you to, how come he can not jump onto the counter and eat the steak. Being boss makes the dog aggressive, anxious, and generally unpleasant.

So make it clear that you are the boss, he eats when you say, he walks when you so desire, you go through the door first unless you tell him otherwise, he does not jump onto the sofa unless invited to do so.

He also needs to know the rules/routines of the house. These need to be consistent and reasonable. It does not really matter what they are - the dog can cope. What he can’t cope with is a rule on Monday that is different on Tuesday or rules with conditional clauses.

There are few rules which have to apply to all dogs; come, heel, sit and stay. To have a dog which does not come when called is to make your life purgatory. To have a dog who won’t walk to heel, who jumps around and who won’t sit still is nearly as bad. And to have a dog which won’t stay put when told to do so is dangerous. These rules take a little patience and practice. But these is absolutely no reason why your dog does not learn these rules and does not obey them on every occasion they are expressed.

Do not issue an instruction you can not enforce and make no exceptions. Start with a lead but he should learn to obey these without a lead.

You and your dog both have the right to happy life. Remember, it is never the dog’s fault when things do not go well, it is always your fault. If the dog is doing something not to your liking, your behaviour is the source. Fix it and harmony will prevail.

HEMMINGS ON DOGS - TIPS
　
If your dog runs off and does not come back when called, turn around and walk off in the opposite direction. Dogs are pack animals and do not like being left alone. He will notice you are not there and will coming running back to find you. Tell him how good he is to come back (a few ‘good dog’s should suffice). After few experiences he will keep an eye on you and come when called.

If your dog has a tendency to jump up (muddy paws on clean white skirts!), put your hand out so he bumps into it and say ‘no’. Do it without exception until he learns that this behaviour is not acceptable.

Dog’s behaviour is largely determined by its breed. Some dogs are bred for biting (bulldogs), some for fetching and carrying (retrievers), some for herding (sheepdogs), some for protecting stock (shepherds), some for seeking out prey (spaniels). Do not own a spaniel unless you are prepared to walk it a mile or more per day. Choose a dog whose innate behaviour matches your circumstances.

Dogs stray and bitches don’t. If you have an unfenced garden, your dog will wander off looking for a little action. Bitches prefer to stay at home (and let the action come to them!).

Dogs characters are formed in the first four to six months of their lives. Get as young a puppy as you can and then both socialise it and familiarise it. Socialise means get it used to being around people and other dogs without being anxious.. Familiarise means getting it used to being in unfamiliar surroundings without being afraid. In both cases, if you are at ease, the dog will learn to be at ease.

Dogs learn quickly who are members of their pack and where are the boundaries of their territory. They learn from you who is friend and who is foe, where they belong and where they are visitors.

Dogs live in the now. If your dog runs off and does not come when called but rather returns when if feels like it, it is pointless (or worse) to reprimand it for not coming back when called. It will assume it is being reprimanded for coming back and get very confused. You will be angry, the dog frightened and misery will prevail. Start again at Tip 1.

Hemmings On Golf

HEMMINGS on GOLF
The Definitive Word
Introduction

There are only two things you have to get right in Golf; the Easy Things and the Difficult Things.

Chapter 1 - The Easy Things
The Grip, the Stance, the Line (aiming). These are the things you do before you get to the Difficult Things. Anyone with an ounce of concentration and a modicum of instruction can get these things right every time. See your Pro and learn how to do the Easy Things in half an hour.

Chapter 2 - The Difficult Things
Learn and memorise the following mantra: "Slow Back, Watch Ball, Swing Through, Trust Body". Repeat at every shot. These sound easy but can take a lifetime to master.

Slow Back. There are tomes written about tempo, slow swing, good timing. They are all wrong. There is only one thing which will work. Take the club back slowly and pause.

Watch Ball. It is blindingly obvious that you can not hit the ball properly if you are not watching it. This easy rule is the most difficult. Anxiety is your enemy - it causes you to look up to see how successful was your shot resulting in a terrible result.

Swing Through. Don’t try to hit the ball. Don’t use the club like a club. Treat it like a sling. Let the club head swing through towards the target.

Trust Body. Trust your body to do the rest. You can do nothing useful with your conscious brain to assist your hand eye co-ordination and distance judgement. Decide where you want the ball to go and then do (a), (b) & (c). Thinking will only interfere with your internal guidance system. Thinking will only raise all sorts of irrelevant issues like how hard to hit the ball and where is the ball going. Trust me.

Conclusion
These gems will not turn you into the Tiger. But they will allow you to play happily.

Hemmings-On-Peru

A health warning; these notes have to be treated with caution as they are based on a three week visit and some reading (The Incas and their Ancestors written by Michael Moseley and published by Thames & Hudson). Also, Peru is divided into three geographic regions, the arid foreshore, the high plateau and the rain forest - my comments are restricted to the first two.
We are used to thinking of the Scottish highlands, the high Alps or the Texas Panhandle as desolate. These are lush compared to the Peruvian foreshore. Nothing grows, nada, zilch - the driest place on earth. The desolation is broken by the occasional oasis fed by a river off the Andean highlands. It is in these oases that the original settlers in about 10,000 BC scratched their living. The river flows are either a trickle or a flood. The rainy season is short, December to April. Drought periods lasted from 900 to 800 BC, 400 to 200 BC, 10 to 300 AD and 1100 to 1450 AD. Annual variations in precipitation arising from El Nino are large. Survival required large irrigation schemes, extensive communal work sharing for construction and maintenance, grain storage technology, and much prayer. (It is now thought that the Nasca Lines are signals to the gods made in the 1100-1450 dry period indicating the traditional water sources and promising enticements for the ending of the drought.) These people learned how to build resilient structures, how to share food when in short supply, and how to live in strong mutually reliant tribal groupings.
They also moved into the mountains where conditions were (and are) further complicated by altitude (Cuzco is at 11,500 ft) and earthquakes (one magnitude 7 episode per decade). They had to learn complicated agriculture (every 100 feet up has a new microclimate; they have 3,000 hybrids of maize) and robust construction (earthquake resistant terracing, houses and grain stores - the Inca walls stand when earthquakes cause the Spanish Churches over them to fall). One of the archaeological sites (Moray) is a pre-Inca agricultural research station based on a 30 metre deep natural sink hole used for the hybridisation of maize - there is a full 15 C temperature difference between the bottom and the top - intermediate terracing allowed for the full range of microclimates for the development of the required hybrids.
All this was pre-Inca. The Incas came late to the party, about 1400 AD, and their genius was administration. Like the Romans, they ruled a vast empire, Columbia to Chile, but without writing or money. They added their administrative structures to the robust cultural norms and strong religious traditions of the subject people - they were the high priests of the Andean population. They built 25,000 miles of roads, thousands of temples and a vast civil service. Everything else was already there. And then the Spaniards ousted the Inca, by a combination of smallpox and inter-Inca strife; they plundered their gold (which was anyway valued only as ornament), installed a new civil service, and planted (literally) the Catholic Church over the Inca Church; but nothing underneath changed.
And it is all still there (excepting the gold). The remains of the temples (hundreds) still stand, the miles (thousands) of irrigation channels and terraces are still maintained, the land is still ploughed by oxen, the crops are still rotated, the people still venerate (we are told) the old gods of the mountains.
The question is how long you will be able to see the old ways and wander among the ruins of the temples. Like our village in Scotland, the inhabitants are made up of children and older people but no teenagers or young marrieds; the young are moving to the towns to live off the tourists and the twentieth century. The visitors are becoming so numerous that the temples will shortly surely need protection and exclusion. It is a bit like Stonehenge; when I was a boy, you could picnic among the stones and wander among the circles; now you can get no nearer than 440 yds.
If you are interested in all this, go to Peru soon - it is turning into a museum.