My Vegan Space

Overall, Greycie was a good girl on her first big trip.

The Italian greyhound was about 41frasl;2 months old when she accompanied her parents to Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia last year.

When we started the trip, she peed on the rental car front seat that my brother rented, said owner David Bushnell of Painesville Township.

He was not happy, added wife, Megan.

But it turned out well; there werent anymore accidents. She did really well with all the people. She loves everyone.

Not every pet is as portable as the 7-pound pup or as easy to care for Greycie now is litter-box trained yet more than 80 percent of dog owners regularly travel with them on short trips, according to a 2010 pet passenger study, and many families take their pets on vacation.

However, the survey, sponsored by AAA and Kurgo Pet Products, indicated that only 17 percent had used some type of pet-restraint device in the past 12 months and that one in five had driven with a dog in their lap.

AAA recommends that owners use a restraint system anytime they are driving with their pet, even close to home, based on statistics showing that looking away from the road for just two seconds doubles the crash risk.

Restraining your pet when driving cannot only help protect your pet, but you and other passengers in your vehicle as well, said Dennis Burke, AAA East Central safety adviser. Continued…

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In an economy that has been reeling in double-digit unemployment and unending home foreclosures, the last thing you would expect is that in the 2010-2011 year we spent a collective $50 billion on our pets. Even more surprising, this figure represents an $8 billion increase in the last three years, during one of the worst US economic downturns.

It is easy to imagine that this information might be a mistake, as it means that more money is now being spent on pets in the United State than the gross national product for all but 64 countries around the world. A staggering $25 billion of the total $50 billion was spent on pet health care and medicines. These are out-of-pocket dollars for services not covered by insurance. Maybe the health care reformers could learn a thing or two from this scenario.

Over the last five years pets have grown in popularity, and so has the value we place on them. The 2011 American Pet Products Association (APPA) survey reported that an astounding 62 percent of all American households have a pet living with them. Americans have come to view and treat their pets in human terms, providing them with designer clothes and jewelry, gourmet pet foods, corrective dental braces and even plastic surgery to improve a pets self-esteem.

While the pet product industry is doing a brisk business, 42 percent of pets share beds or sleeping quarters with their owners (as of 2007). It can even fall to the family pet to hold us together through difficult times. Shared custody of pets after divorce seems commonplace.

But what fuels our passion to treat our animal friends as humans? What does it suggest about what may be missing in our human relationships that we are increasingly treating our animal companions better than our extended family members or even our partners or spouses?

Two weeks ago one of my students shared that she had given her mother a puppy for her birthday last year. The student did so because she knew her mother and fathers relationship was emotionally distant and as a result, the mother was away from the home a great deal. She hoped the puppy would keep her around more often and that that would help the relational rift of the parents.

At first, the mother didnt want the pet and looked to place it elsewhere. In very short time, the pet became the center of the mothers life. She home-cooked or prepared all the dogs meals and took it for acupuncture treatments every two weeks for a minor leg injury. The dog has a groomer, trainer and nutritionist and is currently interviewing for a doggie play group. The mother was around the home more often but now placed her whole focus and most of her time on caring for the pet.

What about this womans relationship with her husband? The student reported that her mother and father are civil to one another, but that there is no warmth or affection between them, unlike the unconditional and extravagant love the mother lavishes on the pet. Is it safer to love a pet rather than deal with the disappointment, conflicts and hard work of achieving a loving relationship with those closest to us?

Am I suggesting that loving our pets is wrong? Absolutely not. My family is blessed with not only a fabulous Maltese canine but also a yard full of llamas, sheep, horses and goats. Our pets are important to us. Pets enhance psychological and physical well-being. They love us, heal us and help us live longer.

Numerous studies demonstrate the healing power of pets. A Purdue University study demonstrated that when seniors face traumas or other adversity, the affection received from their pets and the bond between them helps prevent depression and loneliness. This may be because animals provide emotional support, which is an essential component for health and healing. There is a long list of health benefits from the companionship of animals.

But are we going overboard? The American Pet Product Manufacturers Association (APPMA) estimated in 2008 that more than nine million pet owners purchased Valentines gifts for their pet, spending an average of $17 for the gift. Consumers also spend an average of $6.30 on friends, $4.97 on classmates and teachers and $3.41 on co-workers. (Disclosure: this source also says that people spend an average of $5.04 on Valentines Day gifts for their pets, not the $17 that the APPMA reports.) What does this tell us? Maybe that we feel emotionally safer to love our pets, or that perhaps it is less work and less vulnerable to love our pets than to develop close relationships with most of the humans we interact with on a daily basis.

Our pets love us unconditionally. They listen to us and dont complain or express disappointment in who we are. They provide companionship without the politics or agenda of most human relationships. They accept our love and affection the way we to give it, and best of all, they happily return it. This is a wonderful thing, if it does not become a substitute for intimate human relationships. Emotional intimacy with others of our breed is critical to good health.

We are complex beings who require physical, emotional and spiritual intimacy with others. Social networking has become the way we communicate and do relationships. These days it is often over email and text messages that we are starting relationships or ending them, sharing major life events — even proposing marriage. The intimate contact with other human beings even 10 years ago, before the dominance of the internet and cell phones, is being replaced in large part by our pets.

To achieve balance and wholeness in our lives, we need to keep an eye on how we allow technology and the maddening pace of modern life to cut us off from one another and create fear and competition that robs us of the beauty and fulfillment of intimate and loving human relationships.

Our pets can be an essential part of the fabric of our lives, but in the end our challenge and our hope is to develop human relationships within which we can share, exchange, empower and enoble one another to make our lives and the lives of others more rewarding and fulfilling.

The economy has obviously slowed down over the past few years. Despite how frantically busy life may seem, so has the average American, who is watching a little more TV, engaging in more leisure activities and hobbies, and catching a little more shuteye compared to a few years ago.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics just released its annual Time Use Survey for 2010, and much of the info is unsurprising:

*employed men work a little more than employed women (41 minutes more daily)

*far more women than men (cough! slackers) do housework on the average day (49% vs. 20%)

*the age group engaged in the most leisure activities is adults 75 and up (7.7 hours daily), while the group with the least leisure time is adults ages 35 to 44 (4.2 hours daily)

*far more people work on workdays (82%) than on weekends (35%)

Because much of this data changes very little from year to year, minor shifts in time use–a few minutes more here, a few less there–indicate fairly significant changes in behavior. And two of the most notable changes, according to the data, are that Americans are watching TV and sleeping more. In 2010, the average American spent two hours and 31 minutes watching TV, which is 5.4 minutes more than in 2007. The typical individual was also sleeping five more minutes a night in 2010 (8 hours, 23 minutes) compared to 2007.

What to make of this data? Many experts, including Princeton economist Alan Krueger, are blaming the economy. People may have hoped that newly unemployed or underemployed Americans would use their newfound time volunteering, exercising, or engaging in some other productive activity, but as Krueger told the Wall Street Journal:

Last year continued to show the effects of the weak economy, Mr. Krueger said. The amount of time spent watching TV and other nonproductive activities remains extraordinarily high.

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Kruegers research indicates that sleep and TV occupy a ton of the unemployed individuals time. If youre out of work, youre probably sleeping an hour longer than a person with a job, and a whopping one-quarter of your waking hours are spend sitting in front of the tube. Another study of the typical unemployed individual showed that while he spends 200 minutes a day watching TV, and just 40 minutes a day looking for work.

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USA Today leads its coverage of the new BLS survey by stating that more Americans are working on weekends, but I dont see that in the data. In 2010, 35% of all workers worked on weekends; this includes people working at restaurants and retail stores, who are obviously needed on the job on weekends. Thats the same percentage working on weekends in 2006, according to the BLS. In 2007, 36% of Americans worked on weekends. There were probably more Americans working on weekends a few years back mostly because there were more jobs to be had–including those part-time gigs at restaurants, department stores, and such.

The release of the BLS survey happens to coincide with the publication of a NY Times story about the rising popularity of home brewing. Membership in the American Homebrewers Association has doubled over the last five years, and home brew supply stores report booming business. So what? Well, home brewing is one of the leisure activities occupying more time of those who are spending less time at work. Gary Glass, president of the Homebrewers Association, tells the Times:

Part of the theory, he said, is that people have more time for hobbies when they are unemployed or underemployed.

Brewing beer, or pretty much any hobby for that matter, is probably time better spent than sitting in front of the TV. And, like gardening and a few other hobbies, brewing beer comes with the bonus that by going DIY youre saving money you would have otherwise spent on beer–or perhaps on some hot new gadget you saw advertised on TV.

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Metro Moncton municipalities are in the process of collecting their residents wish lists in regards to recreational and leisure activities and facilities. Moncton, Dieppe and Riverview have all been asking for the publics feedback to help them decide where they need to improve the most in these areas.

It really is an ongoing process, said Rod Higgins, the City of Monctons general manager of parks and leisure services. It really came down to a couple of basic things.

The basics included a full neighbourhood. Higgins said people wanted to be able to walk to a park and have natural green spaces.

They were happy with the quantity of parks, but they werent happy with the quality of our parks, he said.

So improving the parks is one thing the city has decided will be on top of the list.

Moncton held 15 meetings with over 700 people in attendance to discuss their recreation plan. Another popular item was the trail system.

The city created a trail plan in 2000, called Millenium Trails. They have been working on connecting the entire city in phases. One phase was the North West trail, which held its grand opening Friday.

This is something weve worked on for a long time, said Mayor George LeBlanc at the ribbon cutting ceremony. We want people to be able to get from one end of the city to the other easily without having to get in a car.

This is just phase one of the process, said Higgins. Phase two is looking at programming and recreation while phase three is facilities.

The process has been very good so far, he said.

Jocelyn Cohoon, director of leisure services with the City of Moncton, was at the opening of the new North West trail.

We want to promote active living. We want to reduce our carbon footprint. We want the safest routes for bikers. Its all about education.

Dieppe is right in the middle of collecting their feedback. They have a leisure survey residents can access on their website. Raymond Bourque, leisure and recreation facilities department director with Dieppe, said residents havent been surveyed regarding recreation for more than a decade.

All the data will be presented in July, he said. Right now, we dont really have results, but we have an idea of what people are going to say.

Bourque said a new ice pad and improving the parks will most likely be on the list.

We have a lot of challenges. We will have to decide which one will come first. We are going to respond to where the needs are, he said.

Riverview has had the push on for a couple years now to improve their recreational activities and facilities. One of which was the Riverview Town Market opened just last month. So far, the market seems to be a big success. A new dog park has also been added to the town, located at the end of Biggs Drive.

While elaborating on Frued’s notion of denial, Robert Firestone was the first to describe what is now known as fantasy bonding. Fantasy bonding is characterized by the psychological adjustment made by children when enduring physical, psychological or sexual abuse, and involves idealization of the abuser, denial of the abuse, and pseudo-attachment to the abuser.

Often, the primitive bond to the abuser is the only hope the child holds for the warmth or nurturance typically promised through human connection.

While the phenomenon of fantasy bonding is now well understood in the therapeutic community, what is much less understood is that of fantasy bonding in horse-human relationships. Under these circumstances, the adult is experiencing the same dynamic of abuse that would be expected in the parent-child relationship where fantasy bonding occurs. That is to say, that the person looks to the horse for comfort, care, nurturance, and warmth, just as a child would a parent. Yet the horse acts in ways that endanger the person.

He may, for example, bite, kick, buck, or run off with his human companion. However, like a child who denies his caretaker’s abuse and forms a fantasy bond that allows him to disconnect from the abuse and foster the fantasy of a nurturing caregiver, the person who forms a fantasy bond with the horse also denies both the maltreatment by the horse, as well as, the potential for danger.

While the person’s friends, family, trainers and coaches may express concern for his/her welfare, the person will repeatedly deny the dangerous behavior of the horse and offer alternative explanations, such as, “He was just in pain,” or, “He was scared, that’s why he bit me.” Obviously, the deleterious effects of this sort of denial are evident in the often successive injuries the person may suffer.

So, you may ask, “Why does fantasy bonding between horses and humans occur?” Often, the person in this relationship is merely repeating a former abusive relationship. More often than not, he/she has experienced abuse as a child, and is acting on another facet of abuse, called “repetition compulsion” the tendency to repeat the abusive pattern. The horse, in this situation, may actually be attempting to engage the person’s latent defense mechanisms which would interrupt the cycle of abuse and better prepare the person for future threatening situations.

The role of the therapist here is to then make this response of the horse evident to the person (client). In this way the person can begin to unravel the fractured relationship that has developed with the horse, and in doing so, take one step toward overcoming his/her trauma. In future blogs, we will explore the dynamics of trauma in horse-human relationships further.

Photo by miheco, available under a Creative Commons attribution license.

Maxine Holloway in Seeing RedDines wrote, How can I find the words to describe just how brutal mainstream Internet porn has become? But that is her subjective response, and I would hazard a guess that she has not seen the work of Maxine Holloway. One of Holloways clients asks her to dress in thick sweaters and then pee in a bucket. He is from the Netherlands, and after wrapping the film, we discussed that perhaps his fetish was created by a response not to human relationships, but instead to the harsh winters of his country. We think our next film will be an ode to sweater man made with a nod to the style of Ingmar Bergman.

Holloway is not a fan of Dines or those who ignore the voices of those who enjoy working in the adult film industry.

Also not a fan is Tina Horn, professional dominatrix, queer activist, and co-star of Seeing Red. She believes that free, unfettered sexual expression is one of the corner stones of a liberated society. While I was applying her makeup for the How to Spank photoshoot for the third issue of Whore! magazine, she told me she is leaving soon to pursue her MFA at Sara Lawrence. She is looking forward to being able to add legitimacy, as far as most of the world is concerned, to the work that she does.

She believes that her enjoyment of the art of spanking should not be an underground phenomenon, nor should it be marginalized. To Horn, a rousing session is as normal as doing yoga. And possibly more fun.

In an era that has seen a self-proclaimed moral authority seep into the inner workings of government, we need these enterprising sex workers, artists, and free thinkers more than ever. Horn said that expansive thought, in all its forms, is a vital force and will transform the world into a better place.

Indeed, and hell yeah.

The Sweet Spot is a weekly blog column about alternative sexuality by Ginger Murray. Check back next Monday for more.

Each year hundreds of thousands of puppies and kittens are being born into hunger, disease and homelessness on the streets of Bangkok. Travel around the city for just a day, and you cant miss seeing dogs painfully riddled with mange, kittens scurrying across busy roads and mothers nursing their delicate new litters among mounds of waste.

SCAD believes this needs to change. The organisation works to ease this suffering through sterilisation, adoption and education programmes, improving life for street animals, and thereby making life healthier for everyone in the community.

SCAD is very aware that times are tough, and with a continual stream of desperate cases, the organisation is seeking new members through the 1000-For-Change regular giving programme.

Acording to SCADs general ganager Wendy Edney: With more and more desperate animals coming to our attention every day, sometimes the task in front of us can feel overwhelming.

We want to do more, but are often hampered by the lack of a secure revenue stream. We truly need hundreds of people to join with us as a Member of 1000-For-Change.

If successful, with each member donating just 1,000 baht per month, our ability to provide ongoing animal welfare services will be truly revolutionised.

Sachli Salarpour is a major donor and a long time supporter of SCADs work. I began supporting SCAD after being incredibly saddened by the state of the street animals I would see here in Bangkok every day. I was impressed when I saw what SCAD was achieving. I have seen first hand that small actions really can make a huge difference to each animal helped and the communities they came from. I hope others will join me as a member of 1000-For-Change so SCAD can continue its vital animal welfare work, aiding street cats and dogs and benefiting the communities in which they live.

A small charity, SCAD delivers mainly through a small staff and a group of dedicated volunteers. To join the 1000-For-Change, or to help SCAD in any way that you can, go to http://www.scadbangkok.org.