Hapi seems to be having some difficulty with pain, I discussed it with her vet and the vet prescribed gabapentin. She warned that the gabapentin would make Hapi "loopy". Coincidentally my own doctor prescribed something for me to combat nerve pain, and I have to say it's making me feel "loopy" too. I am thinking that almost any medication for nerve pain is going to have that side effect. Personally, I'd rather deal with pain than loopiness. My level of pain is relatively low, perhaps if it was much higher I'd be more willing to accept loopiness. I don't know how Hapi feels about that trade off.
We were late arriving at the Reservoir yesterday (due to loopiness); several dogs and owners were just leaving as we arrived. Hapi insisted on following the crowd back to the parking lot. One owner commented that Hapi just wanted to hang out with the other dogs, I said that it was more likely that she knew some of those dogs were going to be fed treats when they got back to the cars and she wanted to be in on that. I let her follow her nose and she managed to scarf up a few treats before everyone left and we went for our walk in the park. The trails are getting icy but the pond is no longer skatable.
Today is probably the coldest day of the year. The thermometer is in deep subzero territory and the wind is at blizzard levels. Not a lot of snow though. Yesterday was (relatively) warm and wet so between the rain and the melting snow we now have lots of ice. I took Hapi out for a walk early this morning because the forecast was for falling temperatures and rising wind speeds. Sure enough, lots of icy trails. I tried to stay in the woods to avoid the worst of the wind. I am grateful for Lee Valley Icers, the old lady's (and old man's) friend.
Hope for Wildlife emailed me that my blue jay does not have a broken wing or foot but appears to be suffering from head trauma. Now I am thinking that I did not run over it with my car after all, but that it crashed into one of my house windows near the bird feeder (and driveway). No blue jays have shown up at my bird feeder since then, I think they now consider it too dangerous. I met a friend on the street who lives a few blocks away, she says that recently there are twice as many blue jays at her feeder and they are eating her out of house and home.
I just finished reading Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of Mind (2020), by Peter Godfrey-Smith. The evolution of consciousness, or mind, is a theme Godfrey-Smith also wrote about in in his previous book, Other Minds: the Octopus, the Sea and the Origin of Consciousness (2016). In the earlier book Godfrey-Smith focuses on octopus consciousness and how that might have evolved; in the more recent book he looks at the evolution of consciousness in general. He discusses what consciousness is and whether non-human animals have the same kind of consciousness that we have, and if not, how does it differ.
I like his writing style, his apparent scientific knowledge particularly of the theory of evolution, his philosophical slant on that knowledge and the huge resource of his scuba diving experience on the Australian Great Barrier Reef. Of course he includes photos taken on some of those dives. His focus is on the early development of life in the sea, he gives short shrift to more recent development of modern land-based animals. I like that because so much of writing about biological evolution is focussed on land-based animals which is really a relatively recent development. Most of our modern biological processes were first developed in an ocean environment and only much later modified and adapted for land-based life.
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