Fishing The Wild Coast

Not far from the comforts of modern life in the mining town of Nhulunbuy in north-east Arnhem Land in Australia’s Northern Territory – where the town ends – nature takes over.

Just a few nautical miles out to sea, away from Nabalco’s alumina plant on Melville Bay, the landscape unfolds, monsoonal bushland hugs an endless coastline of orange/red to white sandy beaches, rocky points and outcrops and rich red bauxite cliffs – the same view Matthew Flinders saw in 1802 during his circumnavigation of Australia.

The islands, estuaries and rivers in the area are a magnet for passionate sports fishermen and divers. The warm, tropical waters are alive with coral and exotic and sought-after fish – barramundi in the estuaries and off the coast, barracuda, Spanish mackerel, black marlin, queenfish, coral trout, black jewfish, giant trevally and tuskfish.

Along with Bremer, Truant and Bromby Islands, dozens of other smaller outcrops dot the coast and past the strait called the Malay Road, named by Flinders after encountering a Malay fishing fleet there, the English Company’s Islands wrap around the coast to Arnhem Bay.

Further north-west, about 80 nautical miles from Nhulunbuy, the rocky finger of the Wessel Islands point into the Arafura Sea.

The run out to the open sea is not without its hazards, apart from the saltwater crocodiles which live throughout the islands, vessels from the earliest of times have negotiated the Hole in the Wall, known to the Aborigines as the Gugari Rip.

The 1.5km long, cliff-lined channel which separates Raragala and Guluwuru islands is little more than 100m wide at its narrowest point. It can only be negotiated by yachts and fishing boats when the tide is ebbing. When the tide is running, water surges through the rip at up to 13 knots. A day’s fishing out near Veronica Islet, about 12 nautical miles from the coast, and later at Bremer Island and East Woody Island closer to shore, yielded a grab bag of fish.

The weather was changeable, not uncommon for the Dry Season. The best time for fishing in Arnhem Land is from October to February, during the months leading up to and including the Wet Season. The colour of the water rolled through turquoise, aqua and jade as the glaring white clouds tumbled across the sky, throwing racing shadows on the sea.

The choppy seas and showers of the early morning gave way to calm as the fishing boat moved to protected waters behind Bremer and East Woody islands. The change of location marked a change of luck and within two hours, fishing produced any number of trevally, a blue fusilier, a Russell snapper, half a dozen black-tipped reef shark of about 5kg and a snub-nosed dart, all of which were thrown back.

“The one that got away” was large enough to bite through 60lb line while another “legendary” catch bent the hook before it disappeared into the depths.

Continued from Arnhem Land Part 1 – Into A Primal Landscape

To be Continued In Part 3

Photo Credits

Arnhem Land Coastline – Bush Tucker Man

The Gugari Rip – Bing Maps

Black Tipped Reef Shark – Public Domain

Arnhem Land – Part 2 is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

“I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.” ~ Eartha Kitt

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to learn to play the cello. There’s something about that instrument that ravishes me every time I hear it. I feel it first in my belly as its notes swell with passion, then it traverses the length of my body as if I were being played by the master as well. Holding its curved wood and taut strings is like caressing a lover, hands and legs leading the dance of pizzicato and crescendo. It’s a sexy beast. Think of the cello’s climatic role in The Witches of Eastwick and you get the idea.

Of course learning is not mastery. I know that at my age I will not become a cello virtuoso; in fact it’s likely I will be a dismal hack. That’s not a self-deprecating appeasement. It’s just true. The older I get the more I know I don’t know and feel quite content residing on my know-nothing estate. The days of feeling like the mistress of my domain or even wanting that burden have ebbed with time so that I can barely assuage my surety of knowing anything anymore.

There’s an old adage offered up to many a fledgling author: write what you know. If I were a bee keeper compiling a book on the care and maintenance of bee hives that suggestion would get me started, but if I’m engaged in the world there’s always more to learn and more life to add to my apiculture offerings. Limiting myself to the menu of writing what I know would lead me to starvation as well any readers I may have invited to the table. Stephen King in his book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, offers some salient wisdom concerning the art of wordsmithing and that particular axiom. What’s fair game to write about? “Anything at all…as long as you tell the truth.”

Most writers I think will say they were puzzled as to where their stories were leading them, gobsmacked at what opened up for them in the laying down of words, humbled by the thread of divinity coursing through the pages of text that added their name in the end. It was embers of truth and kindling of what they knew that ignited and stirred them, transforming them and their writing in the fires of learning.

The same goes for us all in life. To know is to exist in a closed cell, exorcised from all that life can teach us. To learn opens us up to storehouses of wealth that can enrich and deepen our human experience. Knowing is the nail in the coffin. Learning is the phoenix rising time and again. One of the reasons I admire and follow the Buddhist way is that it calls itself a practice. Not a knowing or a doctrine, but a hands-on, get your heart dirty practice. The Buddha himself said (in so many words) “Don’t take my word for it.” He encouraged his followers to learn for themselves what it means to be living in presence, experiencing each moment in exactitude and letting it all go in the next breath. How do you get to Nibbana? Practice, practice, practice.

Cello lessons await. I’m open to learn and make ear flinching mistakes. I may grow tired or frustrated with it all or I may one day share the reviews of my recital when I sat down and played something discernible and resembling music. In the interlude, enjoy my favorite cellist, Yo Yo Ma, along with some of his friends, who are all ever learning, never knowing and I’m pretty sure always practicing.

Credits

Cello Photo – Microsoft Office Images

Home Page Feature Image – Screen Cap From Video

Video: Helping Hand, from The Goat Rodeo Sessions

Quote by Eartha Kitt from ThinkExist.com

Excerpt from “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” by Stephen King, copyright 2000, Scribner,
a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., p. 158

Learning Life is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

One of the things I say frequently about dogs and their owners is , “You can’t tell someone how to raise their child and you can’t tell them how to raise their dog.”  Like politics or religion, a discussion about how to train or raise a dog can invoke strong emotions and strong opinions across a pretty wide spectrum.  Everyone seems to have their preferred authorities and philosophies.  You can express your own point of view but there is very real resistance to passing judgement on whose methods are more “right” or more “wrong” in polite society.

Most dog owners love their dogs very much and try to act in the best interests of keeping their dogs safe, well-adjusted, and happy.  For some owners, that idea seems to contradict the use of shock collars, prong collars, and training methods based on “discipline” like the Koehler Method and Cesar Millan.  For other owners, the idea seems to contradict the “food bribery”, “coddling”, and lack of “leadership” that positive trainers use with their dogs.  And just like religion, it can be just as hard to know which approach works best for dogs as it would be to know for certain that there was one god, many gods, or none at all watching over us in the heavens.  At a certain point, you just have to take it on faith.

The Black Box

In a very real way, we are playing a “guessing game” when it comes to what our dogs think.  B.F. Skinner called it the “black box” into which we cannot see to know for certain.  All we have to rely on is our dog’s behaviour and the changes in that behaviour as we do things.  Our own human subjectivity and biases make the interpretation of that behaviour something less than precise.  It seems the only way to know what we know about dogs comes about through trial and observation.

What we can observe from our dog’s behaviour is whether or not they are more or less likely to do (or not do) a particular behaviour.  Whether that behaviour is barking at the mail carrier or sitting when we cue them, an observant owner can usually tell if their dog is performing more or less of the behaviour as things in the environment change.  Skinner called this “reinforcement” (increasing behaviour) and “punishment” (decreasing behaviour).  In effect, this should tell us whether changes we make in training our dogs are producing the desired effect by increasing or decreasing the targeted behaviour.

A Willingness To See

In his musical adventure “The Point”, songwrite Harry Nilsson introduces his protagonist, Oblio, to “The Rock Man” who tells him, “The thing is: you see what you want to see and you hear what you want to hear.”  He goes on to ask Oblio, “Did you ever see Paris?”  Oblio says no.  ”Did you ever see New Delhi?”  Oblio again says no.  And the Rock man replies “Well, that’s it.  You see what you want to see and you hear what you want to hear.”  Perhaps it might be a bit deep for a children’s story but I find a lot of truth in it.  We are all free to ignore facts even if they are staring us in the face.

In researching this column each week, I come across some pretty interesting blog posts and articles.  I truly believe that they are published by dog trainers who believe in what they are saying and have a genuine desire to make life better for dogs and their owners.  What I find both stunning and perplexing are the lengths to which some people will go to ignore, re-interpret, or invalidate things that are easily proveable with a little effort.

Let me give you an example.  If I want my dog to come when I call them and I give them a food treat when they do come back, do they come back fast, not as fast, or about the same as before I began offering the treat?  I can measure that.  If I stop offering them the treat after a while, what happens to that “come” behaviour?  Does it become faster, less fast, or stay about the same?  Again, this is totally measureable.

But here’s the thing, some trainers might think that using that food treat is “cheating” to get better behaviour.  And so in spite of the proof that the method can work to get the desired behaviour, that trainer might go to some lengths to show me how, even though my dog is coming to me when called, I have created other “problems” in my dog by using food like “losing my dog’s respect”.

Shaking Bones and Burning Incense

It seems to me that the more a trainer wants a particular outcome, the more willing they are to try anything in hopes of getting that result.  This has been most apparent to me in the sport of dog agility where each weekend trial offers a smorgasbord of training techniques to get your dog to touch contacts, complete weave poles, and follow directions on the agility course.  Unfortunately, many of these techniques seem to be too focused on getting the result without paying much attention to what the dog is actually learning.

I once attended a seminar being presented by an agility instructor who had competed quite successfully in international competition.  He made the point, in no uncertain terms, that agility dogs will watch their handler’s arms and will move in the direction indicated by the movement of the arms.  Having had some experience at that point and, knowing that this did not seem to be true for my dog, I challenged the instructor on this point.  With a condescending smirk and a roll of the eyes, I was told to attempt to run my dog through a prescribed sequence with my hands in my pockets so that I could not use my arms. When I completed the sequence without an error, not once but twice, the  instructor muttered some explanation hastily moved on.  I have no doubt that he continued to tell attendees at his seminars that the hander’s arms are critical to agility handling in spite of the fact that I had shown him at least one case where this was not true.

It seems that people frequentlly stumble upon training techniques that produce a particular result.  The trouble is, once that result is obtained, many times there is no further investigation as to why that approach worked.  Does it work with different dogs?  Does it work with different breeds?  Is there a particular element to that techniques that makes it work?  Can that element be extended to other behaviours to get better results?  It seems to me that this kind of exploration too often takes a back seat to showing anyone who will listen how to duplicate the method.  Teaching them how to “shake the bones” and “burn the incense” to make the magic work.

Gurus and Mystics

This is where the “mysticism” comes into our discussion.  How often do dog owners and trainers adopt a particular training technique or philosophy by taking it “on faith”?  Maybe the technique came from a popular book or television program.  Maybe it came from a trusted friend who has enjoyed a lot of success with her dogs.  It may even have come from an “expert” in the dog community that has been invited to speak to a local dog group.  But does it make rational sense and has it been appropriately tested?

If our dogs were inanimate objects or mindless bystanders, it might be appropriate to try anything and everything out on them until we find what works.  But that’s not the case.  Not only do our dogs have thoughts and feelings, they have memories.  Every past experience we have had with our dog may influence, for good or ill, any new training or techniques we want to use.  And that may have a serious impact on getting the behaviour we want.

Machiavelli and Dog Training

It can seem that the sentiments Niccolo Machiavelli expressed in his book The Prince are prevalent in dog training today – “The ends justify the means.”  Whatever we do in pursuit of our desired goals in training our dogs is fair game so long as it produces the behaviour we want.  However, Machiavelli was talking about social systems in his book and not manipulating individuals.  I would also like to believe that we have developed more accurate and sophisticated philosophies in the time since the 16th century when the book was written.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it’s not alright to take techniques on “faith” before using them on our dogs.  Just because some “expert” says that I can make my dog “stay” by jabbing her in the ribs if they move doesn’t mean it’s the best way to work with my dog.  I also believe there’s a way to empirically determine if that’s true or not.  And I believe that I owe it to my dog to make the effort to find out what my training alternatives are and which methods have proven to be the most effective with the least bad side effects.

Alternative training techniques and trendy appproaches to working with our dogs may sound attractive, especially if they promise quick and lasting results.  There is a lot of money being made everyday by dog trainers making one promise or another.  But when it comes to the health, safety, and well being of the dog you have taken into your home, it is up to you to decide what is best for them.  For me that means doing some research to find the right approach and not just believing in what the popular gurus and trends are saying.

Until next time, keep doing the right things for your dogs!

Photo credits -

Moon – vanhap 2007  from Flickr
Dog Books - Earthworm 2009 from Flickr
Agility Training – Paranoid Black Jack 2008  from Flickr 

Mysticism and Pragmatism In Dog Training is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb. In fact he wasn’t even close. It was on July 24, 1874, at the height of the Victorian era, when University of Toronto medical student Henry Woodward patented the first practical light bulb. In partnership with his neighbor, a hotelkeeper named Mathew Evans, he worked at Morrison’s Brass Foundry on Adelaide St. West in Toronto, performing early experiments with an induction coil and battery. Observing that the spark produced by the contacts shed a steady light the pair spent long hours pursuing their research. This culminated in the development of a carbon filament light source housed in a glass globe filled with nitrogen gas. While an earlier version of the light bulb had been invented by Englishman Sir Joseph Swan, it proved short lived and impractical due to the inability to provide a good vacuum within the globe. This caused the carbon filament to burn out very quickly.

Woodward and Evans solved the problem nicely by pumping nitrogen gas into the glass tube, which housed the carbon filament. As Woodward’s original patent states:

“In the first place we use a gas engine, or other suitable motive power, for the purpose of rotating a magneto Electric machine, and at Such Velocity, as shall create electricity, sufficient to heat certain pieces of carbon to a state of incandescence… A piece of Carbon, as hereinbefore mentioned, pure in quality, and of suitable size, proportionate to the size of lamp or vessel to be used, is scraped and shaped until fitted for the purpose. One electrode is then connected with the Carbon at the top, and the other electrode is connected with the Carbon at the bottom, in the following manner. A small hole is drilled a short distance into each end of the Carbon to fit the electrodes, and when necessary they are further secured by surrounding them with a portion of plaster of Paris or other suitable substance. The electrodes not passing through the carbons, nor connecting with each other. It is then enclosed in a globe, or other vessel, either of glass or other suitable material. The air is extracted from the said globe, or vessel, after it has been hermetically sealed at the ends, and then filled with rarefied gas that will not unite chemically with the carbon when hot. Electricity is now supplied and in sufficient quantity, so as to heat the carbon within the vessel to a State of incandescence, the rarefied gas previously introduced now becomes luminous, and constitutes the light herein designated as Woodward and Evans’ Electric Light.”

Realizing the importance of their discovery the excited inventors tried to establish a company to develop and market the light bulb. To further their efforts Woodward even traveled to France and spent five hundred pounds on a special dynamo developed by the renowned French engineer, M. Gramme. For their trouble Woodward and Evans were publicly ridiculed, scorned as cranks and considered to be less than “bright” by the general public and their confreres. In spite of these setbacks Woodward went on to patent their invention in the United States in 1876.

By now you are wondering where Thomas Edison fits into the scheme of things. The American Inventor had been doing his own research on the light bulb, without much success, when he got wind of the work of the two Canadians. Despite less than “glowing” reports from the general public, Edison knew a good thing when he saw it. The same could not be said for the niggardly investors in Woodward and Evans’ new company. Strapped for cash the inventors sold half of their Canadian patent to Edison in 1876, and in 1879 the U.S. patent was also sold to Edison in its entirety. A disgusted Woodward decided to leave Canada and immigrate to England. It’s reported that Evans died in 1899 in Toronto.

Meanwhile, Edison declared his intention to invent “an inexpensive electric light” and received a fifty thousand-dollar grant to further his efforts. The result was a carbon filament bulb essentially identical to that of Woodward and Evans. Most of the practical work was actually done by Edison’s Serbian lab assistant, Nikola Tesla.

In England, Joseph Swan continued his own work and eventually produced a lamp very similar to Edison’s in the same year. These became known as Swan lamps, and by 1881 were being used to light the House of Commons. Edison and Swan eventually ended up in court to decide who had priority in the invention. They later settled out of court and in 1883 formed a joint company which dominated the electrical illumination industry in Britain for years.

Nowadays Canadians spend much of their lives depending on artificial sources of illumination. Few realize that they have fellow countrymen Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans to thank for this.

References

The First Electric Light Bulb by Bruce Ricketts

Pardon Me, My Maple Leaf is Showing by Gain Wong

Photo Credits

Home Page Feature Image -  Wikimedia Public Domain

“Electric Light.” … 1874  © Library and Archives Canada

The Bulb is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

I grew up here, a dusty one stop sign town by the edge of the high plains desert.

It rains about four inches a year here. In a wet year. The Corsair Range is hazy in the distance, the peaks moving in the rising heat as if a shadow dance troupe loosening up in preparation for the next performance. The streets are potholed and broken, should have been rolled up years ago. The one gas station at the west end of town is closed now, the big trucks that always stopped to refuel before the long desert run go rolling past as if the place had never existed. The only hotel is empty but for the one guest who has been there for as long as anyone cares to remember.

They used to say, with pride, that for a while the hotel was the biggest building in three states. Must have been during the last silver boom I guess. It happened before I was born. The phones don’t work very often. The restaurant is open but hardly anyone goes there any more. The red-haired waitress says that business is way off and the food is still lousy.

The first person I met when I pulled into town yesterday was Darryl. He started in, just like I had never left, like it was still high school. “I’ve got to keep it in front of me, or maybe keep it behind. Doesn’t matter I suppose. It feels like the sky is falling, like the last train has already left town.” And he kept right on walking.

It sounded like the ravings of a lost soul to me but in fact I knew what he meant. We used to be good friends before I hit the road all those years ago.

The sun is rising behind me, streaking the rain clouds with orange and purple in the western sky. The air carries a hint of the jacaranda blooming across town. A young girl, maybe fifteen, is delivering the local paper from a three-speed bike, pedal, pedal, whoosh and thump all the way down the empty street and out of sight.

I think I‘ll stay awhile. I’ll see if the Lost Creek still has a trout in it, see if the library will re-open. Maybe I’ll get the paper delivered, make some dark roast when I wake up and watch the sunrise before I start my writing for the day.

Photo Credits

All Images © Michael Lebowitz – All Rights Reserved

Rain In The Desert is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Today let’s talk about having fun.

Have you ever felt like you were too serious?

That it was tough to let go and just have fun? I had a friend who used to regularly ask me “What are you doing for fun?” After a while, it started to bug me when she asked, because I couldn’t come up with many examples of fun in my life. I had learned at a very early age to be a serious kid, when I was growing up in an alcoholic family, and that naturally became my adult world. I’ve had to – strange to say – learn how to have fun. First I had to start by finding out what I enjoyed, and what made me happy. What a great project, to explore fun! Yet there’s nothing more balancing than the joy of play, or having a great, deep belly laugh.

What was your most recent belly laugh about?

Photo Credit

The Microsoft Office Clip Art Collection

Dan L. Hays offers encouragement for adult children of alcoholics.
The podcasts of these episodes can be found at: Minute to Freedom

Minute to Freedom #30: What Am I Doing For Fun? is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Into A Primal Landscape

Raw, natural beauty abounds in Australia, but there are places in north-east Arnhem Land which must have been moulded by the hands of a primal god. The 650km flight east from Darwin to the town of Nhulunbuy on the Gove Peninsula takes little more than an hour, but it’s a world away.

Passing over Kakadu National Park and Oenpelli, the green-edged snakes of the East Alligator and Mann Rivers twist and uncoil across the dry, red landscape and Arnhem Land unfolds east to the horizon.

Occasional pillars of smoke billow up through the blue sky, made milky by the humid air. Fire is a tool the people of Arnhem Land have used for thousands of years and the smoke from a burn-off covering hundreds of square kilometres is enough to seed passing clouds and produce rain.

It is the Dry Season, the time of, Dharratharra, when the south and south-east winds cut across the land and sea, telling the people it is time to collect mud crabs and turtle eggs.

Arnhem Land isn’t so much a place as an experience. It is an elemental land, governed by earth, wind, fire and water – a mostly untouched wilderness of over 94,000 sq km where it’s often easier to bump into a crocodile than another human being.

Less than 40,000 people live in this wild kingdom about the size of the Australian state of Victoria, and most of them are the owners of this land, the Yolngu or “people”. The rest are Balanda, “European or white people” – mining and government staff, contractors, small business operators and some tourists – temporary visitors in a timeless place.

And Nhulunbuy is little more than an outpost in this vast nature’s keep, perched on the edge of the Gove Peninsula, where the Gulf of Carpentaria meets the Arafura Sea.

The town, with a population of about 4,000, was built in the early 70s as a life-support system for Nabalco’s huge bauxite mine. It has everything to attract jaded miners, and more – from the olympic-sized public swimming pool, golf, flying, surf, tennis, lawn bowls and squash clubs to the well manicured lawns and suburban streets alive with lush vegetation, Bougainvillea, Frangipanni, Banyan Trees and Carpentaria, Traveller and Coconut Palms.

Nabalco employs around 750 people and its mining operations and associated alumina plant, located 15km from Nhulunbuy on the 100sq km natural harbour of Melville Bay, is one of the largest bauxite mines in Australia.

With around 600 single men living in the town, it had all the makings of a rough diamond in the early years, and what went on in the “Animal Bar” is the stuff of local legend. But times change, and some of those rough edges have been smoothed to encourage tourism. The local supermarkets are well stocked with the necessities of modern life, provisioned by the weekly Perkins Shipping barge from Darwin, and for more discerning tastes, fresh fruit and veg is flown in from Cairns, along with such delights as King Island beef.

There is no road haulage into Nhulunbuy, with the only overland link to the outside world provided by the 700km-long Central Arnhem Rd or “Katherine Track”, which cuts through rivers and flood plains to the Stuart Hwy, 60km south of Katherine, and which is often impassable in The Wet.

The living in Nhulunbuy is not cheap, but high wages seem to compensate – there’s a late-model four-wheel-drive in many driveways and a “tinnie” or larger fishing boat on the front lawn. But nothing in this place is ordinary or suburban. Players on the nine-hole golf course are issued with 20 extra balls to discourage them from thrashing through the undergrowth on the banks of the nearby town lagoon, Gaynggaru. Bumping into a saltwater crocodile might put them off their game.

And early morning joggers keep a wary eye for water buffalo that occasionally wander through the town, oblivious to the fact that the land has been leased to Balanda miners.

Yachties from all over the world find their place in the sun at the Gove Yacht Club at Gove Harbour in Melville Bay. Gove is a final provisioning and repair stop for international yachties before heading to waters around the Gulf of Carpentaria, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and points further north.

Every year in June, the club and its lush gardens which front the harbor were awash with high spirits and alive with sea banter.

More than 40 yachts from 9m to 22m lay at anchor on the tranquil waters, ready to take part in the annual Over The Top race, a 500 nautical mile 12-day Cruise in Company to Darwin along stunning coastline, linking with the Darwin to Ambon race.

Surrounded by thousands of square kilometers of monsoon forests, bushland, wetlands, estuaries, islands and rivers and with daily temperatures around 30C all year, living an outdoors lifestyle is easy and dining under the stars of a tropical night is the norm.

Continued in Arnhem Land Part 2 – Fishing The Wild Coast

Photo Credits

Salt Water Crocodile – Tourism NT

Arnhem Land Aerial View – Credit Pending

Darwin To Ambon Race – From The Darwin to Ambon Yacht Race & Rally Facebook Page

Gove Airport Terminal – by Dustin M. Ramsey

Crossing the Goyder River - By eyeweed on Flickr – Some Rights Reserved

Arnhem Land – Part 1 is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

I fell in love with Costa Rica during a one day stop on a ten day Caribbean cruise. How could you not like a country that disbanded its army in 1949? The Costa Ricans, or Ticos as they call themselves very pragmatically decided after a bloody civil war that if there was no army then there would be no more civil wars, and they were right. This, along with its craggy volcanic peaks, cascading waterfalls, lush forests and breathtaking views prompts the nation’s sobriquet of “the Switzerland of Central America”. Costa Rica is a country of almost 5 million and an area of 51,000 square kilometers. It is located between Panama and Nicaragua.

Expatriates have long loved it’s stability and excellent health care system of this and have been attracted to the country by its “pensionado” program designed to bring retirees down, creating employment, jobs and a pleasantly international flavor to the country. Tourists are drawn by the fabulous eco-tourism opportunities facilitated by the fact that 25% of the country is designated conservation area.

Having vowed to return after my one day cruise stop, this winter found me spending a full week in Costa Rica’s Guanacaste Province in the northwest portion of the country. I had booked via Air Canada Vacations at the Flamingo Beach Resort on Playa Flamingo. My significant other had to cancel out but I found a not-at-all reluctant last minute companion in my baby sister Heather.

Perched on the fine white sand of Flamingo Beach our hotel had a panoramic view of low mountains, other nearby beaches and the Catalina Islands, a string of rocky sea stacks that stretches across the horizon like a strand of the beach vendors’ beaded jewelry.

In front of the hotel Jose Matagalpa (ph. 86-26-70-08), originally a Nicaraguan cowboy, has a string of well-groomed and well-loved horses he’ll rent to worthy visitors for a scenic one to two hour beach ride. He tailors his pace to the skill level of his guests. My sister, Heather, a top notch equestrian proved a challenge to him and they spent half the time galloping full tilt down the beach, with me inelegantly bringing up the rear.

After checking out the beach you may want to head inland to the nearby Rincon de la Vieja National Park where visitors can hike up the slopes of an active volcano to view the craters, crater lakes, bubbling springs of water and mud pools as well as varied wildlife. Several species of monkeys haunt the forests and can often be seen and heard. Warning: the howlers sound more like gorillas!

Heather and I spent our time here at the Buena Vista Ranch, commencing our day with a hike up through old growth forest to a spectacular network of ziplines. Well harnessed, we skimmed the treetops from platform to platform stationed high above the jungle floor.

Afterwards the quarter-mile long water-slide beckoned. This narrow concrete shoot is wedged between the huge trees which dot the volcanic slope and happily bore no resemblance to the ones found in most North American water parks. It’s not for the faint hearted, however.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Following our slide this we horseback rode down to the volcanic hot springs for a hot steam bath, a volcanic mud slathering, then soaks in pools of various temperatures nestled alongside a cascading stream. This treatment is reputed to have potent anti-aging effects. I spotted a group of teenagers and joked with Heather that they were the members of a senior citizen tour group we’d spotted earlier.

That evening we made our way up the Mary Sol, a restaurant and bar with awesome views of the sunset and excellent food. It’s a local tradition to watch the sun as it sinks into the depths of the Pacific Ocean from here. If you don’t have a car and the climb up the hill is too daunting, they have a shuttle they’ll send for you.

The following day I booked a jet ski tour through Playa Vida to see the Catalina Islands and snorkel at Honeymoon Beach. The bizarre sea stacks are intriguing and the jet ski ride, headed by Playa Vida guide, Yasser, was an incredible rush as the two of us blasted across the chop of the bay, sometimes becoming air borne. Again, the tours are adjusted to the skill level of the participants and Yasser had taken a young family for a jet ski adventure earlier in the calm morning waters.

Visitors can also go to the nearby Las Baulas National Park for an opportunity to see endangered leatherback turtles laying there eggs on the beach, or they can venture further afield to the Monteverde cloud forest or the Arenal volcano. There is also a great opportunity to take a side trip from Guanacaste to Nicaragua and see the spectacular old colonial city of Granada, and to get a close look at the Masaya volcano, sometimes called “the Gates of Hell”.

I would like to have done a great deal more but it would take a solid month or more to see all that Costa Rica has to offer. Needless to say, to paraphrase a former California governor, “I’ll be back”.

If you go:

Costa Rica Tourism Board
1-866-COSTARICA

For travellers from Canada
Air Canada Vacations

Photo Credits

All Images By George Burden – All Rights Reserved

Costa Rica Calls is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

It’s a sunny morning here on the hill in Victoria.  Tira and Rizzo and I are all in the living room listening to some music and enjoying the cool spring air.  There is just something I find very satifying being in the company of my dogs.  They are both dozing near me and I get the occasional glance or sigh.  It’s a wonderful reminder that, all things considered, life is good right at this moment.  I’m glad to have Tira and Rizzo here to remind me of that.

I’ve had a few random thoughts knocking around the inside of my head lately and this week seemed as good a time as any to toss them out to my readers and see what you may think about them.  I offer them in no particular order and they are just things that made me go “hmmm” this week.  

Dogs and Paychecks

This week I came across a great blog post by Victoria Stillwell called “Why Positive Training Is Not Bribery”. Ms. Stillwell makes some excellent points in her article and it’s well worth a read.  But she used a familiar analogy used by many positive dog trainers that just didn’t feel right.  It’s an analogy that I’ve often used myself but always left me uneasy for some reason.

Reward-based trainers will often make the comparison between rewarding your dog for behaviours and humans receiving a paycheck for the work they do.  Stillwell’s version in her blog post is, “Imagine you arrived at work tomorrow and were called into your boss’ office. You like your job (pretend if you have to), and are generally quite good at it. Your boss praises you for your good work and tells you how glad he is to have you on the team, and then informs you that as of that moment, you’d no longer be receiving any salary.”  And that’s when I finally figured out what has bothered me about this analogy.

What Stillwell and others who use this analogy seem to be suggesting is that if you do not use rewards when the dog performs behaviours, then they do not get “paid” and so they ask if you would do your job if you didn’t get paid for it.  But this isn’t an entirely accurate analogy.  Our dogs do get paid – they get food and water everyday (in mose cases).  And this stretches the credibility of the comparison.  We humans work for a full week or more without getting compensation where our dog gets something tangible at least once per day.

So am I quibbling over trivial details?  I don’t think so.  If we want our message as positive trainers to really hit home with those who don’t yet see the benefits of what we do, we need to have a solid message.  On the surface, the “payday” analogy seems accurate enough and expedient but a force trainer or even a dog owner could quickly poke a hole in it.  Our dogs get “paid” every day and a trainer could make the case that the dog should be motivated to cooperate with their human to make sure that the “payments” keeps coming.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer for this.  I don’t have a different analogy or clever way to reword this.  A more appropriate analogy might be getting paid everytime we completed a task at work.  Perhaps the case could be made that dogs don’t think at a complex enough level that they understand their daily feeding as a “paycheck” but the fact that dogs cooperate with us at all would lead us to believe that they have some sense of connection between doing what we ask and getting what they need from us.  I would be very interested if anyone else has a different analogy they could share?

Just Fix It

Something I find surprising since crossing over to positive training is the number of dog owners who just want the “fix” for their current dog issue.  It could be barking at the door or not completing the weave poles in agility or just not focusing on them when they want to work with their dog.  As someone who approaches dog training from a behavioural point of view, I sometimes struggle when asked to just give a dog owner a recipe to “fix” their problem.

It isn’t that I can’t help them with their issue, I just need more information to go on beyond just the problem at hand.  After all, it’s not like replacing a broken part in a toaster.  If someone asked me “how do I put out a fire?”, I would not be entirely accurate if I told them to “throw water on it.”  That solution might work for some situations but it isn’t necessarily specific enough to help them out.  People frequently look for help when they are at their wits end and want the problems solved now.

It can be tricky to balance giving a dog owner enough of the right information without testing their already thin patience with overly long explanations of learning theory and behaviour modification strategies.  Something that I have found to bridge the “information gap” is using the internet technology at our disposal.  I try to get an email address and forward helpful information and links to online information to the owner so that they can dig deeper when it’s convenient for them.

So maybe I can’t solve the problem for them, but I will give them a few suggestions to pursue and try to provide as much background information to them electronically to help them out.  Smartphones and tablets are making it even easier to get good information to clients without having to spend a lot of face time explaining things to them.  I’ve also found that working with owners after they have had a chance to review some basic instructions that I’ve forwarded is much easier and more productive.  It seems we now have the means, in most cases, to be as thorough as we need without spending a lot of time with the client explaining.  Most owners will happily read what you send them and that makes things a lot easier.

“If A Million People Do A Stupid Thing, It Is Still A Stupid Thing”

The line above is a quote from a cartoon character.  Opus the penguin was the philosopher and sometimes comic foil in Berke Breathed’s award winning comic Bloom County.  Opus was lamenting the silliness of his penguin comrades in the Falkland Islands when he made his pronouncement but his words seem applicable to a lot of the dog world as well. 

There seems to be no end to the ridiculous and sometimes dangerous methods people come up with to train and work with their dogs.  There are popular books, television programs, and long established educational programs that still recommend outdated and potentially harmful ideas and training techniques.  

Taking the wisdom from the words of a cartoon penguin, just because a lot of people do something with their dogs is not validation that it is the best way to do it.  And just because a lot of people believe something is true does not mean that it is, in fact, true.  Fortunately, there are some great people out there using actual science and research on dogs to develop safe, effective, and remarkably fun ways to train and work with dogs.

Allow me to introduce you to the Pet Professional Guild. The Guild is a recently formed group of pet professionals dedicated to providing educational resources to pet care professionals and the public that promote force-free and scientifically proven approaches to animal care.  The Guild is open to pet care professionals and trainers as well as pet owners who want to learn more about working with their dogs.  Their website provides a wealth of information for pet owners from book and DVD recommendations to articles on raising a happy, healthy puppy.  

The Guild now has over 700 members in 17 countries around the world.  Perhaps the most important resource they can offer dog owners is an easy way to find a force-free Guild affiliated trainer in their area who can help.  The Guild website includes a page dedicated to helping locate your local Pet Professional Guild trainer.  For more information on the principles all Guild trainers follow, please see this page.

Wagging Tails

So from me and the black Belgians Tira and Rizzo up here on our hill, here’s wishing your and yours lots of fun and wagging tails this week.  Thanks for indulging my random thoughts this week.

Until next time, have fun with your dogs.

Photo credits -

Office Dogs - emdot 2009  from Flickr
Tommy – jackace 20061 from Flickr

Dog Tails and Random Trails is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

It’s always an adventure to eat in foreign countries. Strange smells, curious colours, tantalizing tastes. (And, occasionally, uncomfortable gastronomic conditions which go by many colourful names but my favourite is from Syria, where I got to experience a bathroom-related temporary condition which the locals called “yallah yallah” meaning, literally, “quickly quickly”.) But lately I’ve spent a lot of time in Thailand. There are many pleasant surprises for the foodie in this tropical kingdom.

For starters, I’m very happy to report that the food we get in North American Thai restaurants is indeed authentic and would be familiar at any high street establishment back home. Compare this to the typical “Chinese” food we get at home which, while tasty in a deep-fried kind of way, bears no resemblance whatsoever to actual cuisine found in the world’s most populous nation. Japanese food in North America is more authentic, but our beloved and ubiquitous sushi is a rare delicacy in Japan – usually reserved for wedding feasts – and actually quite difficult to find in a typical Osaka eatery. Not so in Thailand. Phad thais, green curries, kao phads – all were in abundance from Bangkok to Bunyasiriphant’s Roadside Cart.

This concept of humble authenticity really hit me after I’d given a presentation at a government office and our hosts had arranged for lunch with a row of steam trays in the corridor. I joined the line, slopped some rice onto my plate and took a polite sample of the offering in each stainless-steel tray. Typical, institutional food, and it was obvious by their casual behaviour that my hosts didn’t think the meal anything special. But it was! It tasted like the food served at Sabhai Thai, my wife’s favourite restaurant in our local village. So there I was, eating run-of-the-mill, cafeteria food, and feeling like I was dining gourmet. Seriously, folks, they eat like this all the time.

(Full disclosure, I skipped the dessert of what looked like jellied eyeballs.)

But the biggest surprise actually came at one of the hotels I stayed at in Bangkok – Le Meridien, if you’re curious. I ordered breakfast in my room so I could get on the phone to Vancouver while folks in the office were still at work, and a typical selection of scrambled eggs, bacon and pastries arrived. But then, nestled in a pretty, wee basket, were some tater tots. I can take tater tots or leave them, but these were – without question – the finest, most delicious tater tots I have ever had. I seriously wondered if they filtered the oil in which these were fried through virgin, $100-bills. I never would have placed tater tots in the realm of fine dining, but these little golden beauties were like nuggets of sunshine, captured and deep-fried in a land that knows how to make good food.

And I think that’s it. If food is important to a culture, they take every meal seriously. It reminds me of a time I was in Antibes, France, and I ordered the cheese platter because I was hungry and I figured that would be quick. The waiter obviously didn’t hear me properly, and assumed with a sniff that this ill-cultured North American had ordered the cheeseburger, not cheese platter. Can you hear how they sound the same? I’m being charitable too. Anyway, the cheeseburger eventually arrived, and I was so hungry by this time that I wasn’t sending it back and waiting even longer. I am North American, after all, and who amongst us can say no to a cheeseburger when it’s sitting right in front of you? And, mon dieu, was that not – without question – the finest, most delicious cheeseburger I have ever had. It’s like the chef was ordered to put cheeseburgers on the menu because of the international clientele, and with an exasperated sigh he decided that if he was going to be forced to offer the symbol of the nouvelle bourgeouisie americaine, it was going to be the best damn burger this world had ever seen.

But I digress.

Another, shall we say, exciting element of eating in foreign lands is that you are not always sure exactly which animals are considered eligible for the menu. At one beachside café we were enjoying a wide variety of local dishes ordered in Thai by our host, the lovely Akanit. Everything was delicious, but one dish consisted of breaded and lightly-fried packets – perhaps thrice the size of those tasty tater tots – that my colleague Ken and I agreed were fantastic. I was in the middle of chewing my third sampling when Akanit turned to us and said (we both swear we heard the same thing):

“These are made from cat meat.”

I fought down the gag reflex. Hard. “What?”

Ken and I exchanged wide-eyed glances. He nodded in horror.

She repeated herself, speaking very clearly. Thankfully my ear was well tuned to the Thai accent and I understood her properly this time: “These are made from crab meat.”

Phew. Lunch staying down. When we explained the misunderstanding, Akanit laughed out loud and assured us that dogs and cats are considered pets in Thailand, not delicacies. While I’m still not sure about the jellied eyeballs, I feel pretty safe in Thailand eating what’s put in front of me. Even the “hundred-year-old eggs” were quite good.

So amongst all the many reasons I’d recommend a trip to Thailand – beautiful beaches, gorgeous weather, ancient temples, friendly people, and good value for money – the food has to top the list. It’s seriously like eating at your favourite Thai restaurant every day, and even the non-Thai food can be spectacular when made in the kitchens of this kingdom. Best of all, because the food is generally very healthy and spicy, you can eat as much as you feel like and maybe even lose weight on your trip.

Sounds like a tasty slice of heaven to me.

 Photo Credits

All photos by Bennett R. Coles – All Rights Reserved

Tastes, Treats and Moments of Terror in Thailand is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN