what makes happiness

If you've ever looked at your dog and thought, wow, your life is great, what I would give for my life to be that easy. Well, I believe we can learn from dogs, and I'm writing a blog, with my dog Daisy, to teach people how to make life that easy.

Actually I started this blog to sell my e-books Jackpot and The Band, but that has now turned into a side gig.

Post for post Daisy and I are tackling life's challenges and world problems.

This is Discussions With My Dog.

Today we were discussing self-help books. 

These are books, often written by celebrities that instruct you how to improve yourself. There are two schools of thought about self-help books; the first is they are written by a bunch of charlatans who are just cashing in on your insecurities. The second is that if you follow their advice you can improve your life in ways you would never have imagined yourself. Another interesting comparison is that self-help books are a bit like tattoos. Either you have never read a single one, or the chances are you’ve bought about a dozen.

Self-help books cover a relatively small number of aspirational categories, how to make yourself wealthy, how to gain confidence and how to lose weight. So, I asked Daisy, do you know any people who are (i) poor, (ii) shy or a bit insecure or (iii) fat? Daisy looked at me to say ‘I certainly do. Unless you hadn’t noticed Dad, you could lose a few pounds yourself’. So clearly self-help books aren’t reaching everyone.

Daisy, being a dog has never read a book. When she was going through her puppy stage, she did chew up a couple of books, leaving a large soggy pile of confetti on the carpet. Nevertheless, there are a few things that she can tell us all about being happy.

It’s very easy to observe what makes Daisy happy or excited, roughly in this order;

1.        Foxes, cats, squirrels or other furry animals
2.        The lead
3.        The food-bowl
4.        A tennis ball

I should point out this is not a self-help blog. Wearing a lead will not make you happy (unless you are into the bondage / BDSM thing).  

I shall explain these things in comparative human terms.

1. Know your enemies. Do not take any shit from these people (another warning - please avoid inflicting violence or other criminal or anti-social activity). If someone does something that offends you or is behaving like a dick, don’t accept it, tell them.
2. Going for a walk or other form of exercise is actually quite good for you.
3. Eating is also good for you. Daisy likes to keep a good balance between (2) and (3).
4. Daisy doesn’t retrieve the tennis ball like a Labrador or a Spaniel would, she carries it round with her for the whole walk. I think the lesson here is if you have something of value, take care of it. 

This blog is brought to you free of charge. It might save you a few quid the next time you are browsing through a bookshop.

Daisy says "chill" 

Alastair and Daisy

new technology vs old technology

If you've ever looked at your dog and thought, wow, your life is great, what I would give for my life to be that easy. Well, I believe we can learn from dogs, and I'm writing a blog, with my dog Daisy, to teach people how to make life that easy.

Actually I started this blog to sell my e-books Jackpot and The Band, but that has now turned into a side gig.

Post for post Daisy and I are tackling life's challenges and world problems.

This is Discussions With My Dog.

Today’s subject is unnecessary technology. It’s quite probable that I will come back to this subject in future discussions with my dog.

pointless inventions

It seems wherever I look there is some unnecessary technology that I either don’t understand or fail to understand why it exists. The high-street and the internet are full of gadgets and accessories that nobody really needs. The Japanese appear to be responsible for inventing most of it and the Chinese have taken over mass producing it. For example, Asia sells a whole range of toilet seats that play musical tunes – why? If I want music whilst using the toilet, I can resort to bodily functions to make a few trumpet noises, although I can’t hold a tune.

check out this link for the 12 most pointless inventions ever manufactured 

How technology affects us negatively

The particular technological advance annoying me today is the push / pull handbrake button on my car. This piece of kit works perfectly, I can’t fault what it does. But this little button has replaced what a car should have, a levered handbrake. This old fashioned device is in exactly the place where I want a handbrake to be and can be used to execute handbrake turns. I have to be completely honest and admit I’ve never attempted a handbrake turn. It’s a trick that rally drivers do to spin the rear end of the car around tight hairpin bends. The handbrake turn looks epic, with the car ploughing up a cloud of dirt & gravel as it rotates through a full 180 degree turn. The point I’m making is that I have been denied the privilege of performing a handbrake turn if I wanted to. The silly little button has deleted the fun option.

Daisy's response 

So, what is Daisy’s take on this? Daisy has her own manoeuvre which can be best described as the paw-brake turn. Our back garden has a stretch of lawn and a couple of raised borders that run most of the length of the garden. After we moved in, we spent a couple of months clearing the borders and laid them with bark. Bark is the perfect surface on which to perform an immense paw brake turn.

Lurchers are sprinters and Daisy is no slouch. She is also a relatively large dog and in order for her to slow and change direction simultaneously, which is an essential part of the chasing game she likes to play with her doggy friends, she engages the paw-brake turn. It looks quite spectacular and it sends piles of bark flying in all directions or tears bloody great lumps out of the lawn. Daisy thinks paw-brake turns are awesome and she completely opposes anything that would stop her being able to use her signature move in the chase game.

At the weekend I’m popping down to Halfords to see if they can fit Daisy with a paw-brake button.

Cyberdog

If you can think of any other technology that is just damn right unnecessary please comment below.

Alastair and Daisy

Service dog fail test

If you've ever looked at your dog and thought, wow, your life is great, what I would give for my life to be that easy. Well, I believe we can learn from dogs, and I'm writing a blog, with my dog Daisy, to teach people how to make life that easy.

Actually I started this blog to sell my e-books Jackpot and The Band, but that has now turned into a side gig.

Post for post Daisy and I are tackling life's challenges and world problems.

This is Discussions With My Dog.

As dogs go Daisy is quite clever. She’s not an Einstein dog and she can’t be bothered to learn party tricks like roll over and lay down, but she does learn things that benefit Daisy. For example, she can open just about any door in the house that has a lever handle by trapping it between her paws. Unfortunately, we haven’t managed to teach Daisy how to close doors.

That got me wondering whether Daisy could have been trained to be a working dog, maybe a gun dog, a sniffer dog or even a guide dog?

A day in the life of Daisy the guide dog would go something like this. (Daisy’s owner is a blind man called Mr Smith).

Mr Smith -            “We need to go to the chemists this morning to pick up my prescription.”

… a short walk later.

Mr Smith -            “Good morning, I’ve come to pick up my medicines”.

Shop attendant -  “I’m sorry, we don’t sell medicine”.

Mr Smith -            “Where am I”?

Shop attendant -  “In the bakery”

Mr Smith -            “Very sorry, my guide dog must have got confused. Since I’m here can I get a Danish pastry and a sausage roll for Daisy”.

… half an hour of walking later.

Mr Smith -             “I can hear swings and kids playing. We’re in the park. You’re taking me to the other chemist, aren’t you? the one on the other side of the town. You silly dog”

Daisy thinks -        “You didn’t say which one.”

Mr Smith -            “I’ll let you off the lead for a quick run, but we’ll have to go back to the other chemist because they have my prescription”.

… half an hour later, after Daisy has rounded up the squirrels and sent them back up the trees.

Mr Smith -            “Good morning, I’ve come to pick up my medicines”.

Shop attendant -  “Hello again”.

Mr Smith -            “I’m back in the bakery, aren’t I?”

Now watch this service dog go shopping.

On reflection Daisy probably wouldn’t make a very good guide dog.

Alastair and Daisy

expectations of a call centre

If you've ever looked at your dog and thought, wow, your life is great, what I would give for my life to be that easy. Well, I believe we can learn from dogs, and I'm writing a blog, with my dog Daisy, to teach people how to make life that easy.

Actually I started this blog to sell my e-books Jackpot and The Band, but that has now turned into a side gig.

Post for post Daisy and I are tackling life's challenges and world problems.

This is Discussions With My Dog.

Last week I had to get in touch with a company – it doesn’t really matter who they are – it’s having to deal with call centres that I’m having a moan about.

Unsurprisingly getting through to somebody who could assist me was a long and torturous process. So long, that we had to cut Daisy’s walk short.

I explained to Daisy that this was all because of state-of-the-art customer service. I don’t blame the people who work in call centres – it’s the idiot management who design the systems. 

Daisy was a bit miffed and expressed her dissatisfaction about the call centre administrator in the most vindictive way a dog knows how, by wishing ‘their arsehole become infested with the fleas of a thousand camels’. (Think about this happening if you were a dog!)

This got us thinking about the type of character who is responsible for running a call centre. Their game plan is to make life as awkward as possible for the customer, but in insidious ways, under the guise of delivering great customer satisfaction. This guys manager sees that the calls to the centre are reducing - which can only mean that their service is excellent -because we’re getting less complaints. Double bubble, we don’t need to employ so many call-centre staff. The call centre manager thinks ‘RESULT’, but it’s a good thing my manager is an even bigger dick than me.

Here is a 10 point plan on how to run a really effective call centre;

    1.       Carefully select the ‘on hold’ music to play whilst customers are waiting. Go for something ridiculously cheerful, but really irritating when it’s played on a loop.

    2.    Interrupt the ‘on hold’ music with a message about “how important your call is to us”.

    3.    Interrupt the ‘on hold music’ with another message “We are experiencing a high levell of calls at moment” – it’s the customers fault we’re too busy.

    4.    The first line of defence is always an automated message. Insist the customers provides lots of information to identify themselves. To be honest – would you ever make a call to a call centre pretending to be someone else?

    5.    The robot should then give the caller a list of options to press – so “you can deal with their call more efficiently”. At least six or seven options are good – by about number 6 the customer can’t remember what 1 or 2 were.

    6.     For an added challenge the automated messages can be on a continuous loop. Only the most persistent callers will work out how to get through the maze of automated questions.

    7.     When the customer is finally connected to an actual person, ask all the same identity questions that the robot asked – because “you value their privacy”.

    8.     Employ staff from all over the world, especially ones with pronounced accents. Customers love to guess where your call centre is actually based.

    9.     For difficult enquiries the customer adviser should redirect the call to the technical team. The customer knows there is a 50/50 chance their call will get disconnected. The customer service adviser has no idea that you don’t have a technical team and the call is directed into deep space. In a million light years alien civilisations will intercept all these calls.

    10.   If the customer advisor has been of no practical help, he/she should always tell the customer to “have a great day” in a happy smiley voice.

Alastair and Daisy

2020 Marathon Challenge

If you've ever looked at your dog and thought, wow, your life is great, what I would give for my life to be that easy. Well, I believe we can learn from dogs, and I'm writing a blog, with my dog Daisy, to teach people how to make life that easy.

Actually I started this blog to sell my e-books Jackpot and The Band, but that has now turned into a side gig.

Post for post Daisy and I are tackling life's challenges and world problems.

This is Discussions With My Dog.

Daisy and I were all packed up in the car and headed to the beach for a Sunday morning stroll. Our route was, however, closed to traffic because a marathon was taking place. I should say that running 26 miles or so is an incredible feat and marathon’s do raise a lot of money for good causes … but

Blocking the roads caused us to take a massive detour and cut short Daisy’s walk. If they want to run, can’t they do it in a more convenient place, like the pavement, or the beach or the park? Why not put all that energy to good use, set up a giant hamster wheel and connect them up to the national grid.  

I asked Daisy what she thought about the marathon. She quoted Shania Twain “That don’t impress me much”.
“How so” I asked. If you’ve read about Daisy’s exploits, you’ll understand she is a full-on dog, she does not do things by halves. Daisy explained this by giving me a history lesson (please excuse any historical inaccuracies, this is her version).

A brief history on Ancient Greece

Back in 490BC the Greek City state of Athens was having a spot of bother with an invading Persian army. They decided to call on Sparta for assistance as the Spartans had a reputation for being handy in a scrap. The City elders needed to dispatch a message, so they called on their champion long distance runner, a chap called Pheidippides.

City elder:         “Pheidippedes, Athens is in desperate trouble. We need you to go to Sparta for aid.”

Pheidippedes:   “What’s their hashtag? I’ll send a message on Twitter”.

City elder:         “Unfortunately the internet won’t been invented for another 2,500 years”

Pheidippedes:   “OK, how far is it”.


City elder:         “About 26 miles”.


Pheidippedes:   “No problem, I’ll get the bus”


City elder:         “Sorry, even if buses had been invented, there would be Government cut backs, rural bus services have been cancelled at the weekend”.

Pheidippedes:   “We must have a horse”


City elder:         “It’s over a steep mountain path, a horse won’t make it”.

Pheidippedes:   “And you say this is urgent”?


City elder:         “Indeed, you’d better get on your bike”.

Pheidippedes:   “Don’t tell me, bikes haven’t been invented”?

So, Pheidippedes ran 26 miles to Sparta, delivered the message and hot footed it all the way back to Athens. On his return he donned his armour to fight the Persians at the battle of Marathon. Sadly, Pheidippedes perished from his exertions.

World marathon challenge 2020

So, if modern day marathon runners wish to impress Daisy, they should do it the traditional way. Once they have finished the run, instead of one of those shiny silver insulation blankets, they should be issued with a helmet, breastplate, shield and spear. Greek armour was cast in bronze and the shield alone weighed about forty pounds. The runners should then line up in formation to face the onslaught of about a million Persians warriors. If I received a link to a ‘just giving page’ for a guy who was willing to do this I would donate generously to his chosen charity.

Alastair and Daisy