Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A vet who argues petkeeping is a human aberration and dispenses advice via best-selling books, radio and TV.
On the island
Eight records
Some of us have simply landed on our feet. I've had the good luck to have good health in my entire family, including myself, to have not made active premeditated decisions, to have simply fallen into things. The career I went into, the country I've ended up living in. Life's been quite easy so far.
My uncle would introduce me to my lessons by playing Danny Kaye doing something. He was there to get me interested in classical music. He failed. He got me interested in watching Danny Kaye films. But his narrating Tubby the Tuba is still something that I think any child would enjoy listening to.
Donna Summer singing State of Independence, and especially when she has a choir that consists of Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and Quincy Jones and Lionel Ritchie, it was a great song in the 60s. The American civil rights movement had just begun, and a number of us either wanted to get involved or did get involved. And her song exemplified more than simply the independence of falling in love, which is what I think the song is really about.
Yes, Alfie, the the song Alfie by Bert Bachrach. But I heard Bert Bachrach actually sing it himself on Swedish television where he was picking up some award. And his voice is so terrible that you actually pay attention to the lyrics.
The Ying Tong song is something that I used to sing to my kids when they were little. And when I asked them what are your favorite songs, because if you don't come up with a favorite song, I'm simply going to suggest what would get you out of your foul moods when you were little. Ben and Tamara, my two youngest, went Please, please, please, the Ying Tong song
I'm Gonna Go Fishing is to me summer. It's the fact that throughout my childhood my father was out fishing hoping to catch the biggest muskie in the lake, and he never did. Then it was my children standing at the edge of the dock fishing and catching fish bigger than my dad caught. It's just an easy summer song.
I don't know why I ended up in Britain. It's another one of those little quirks. And you could say that I'm an economic migrant, that I came here because the salaries were so good, or I love the weather. But Willie Nelson's Living in the Promised Land is a it he sang about how magnificent the United States is. And it's a funny song coming from the garrulous, unshaven Willie Nelson. I think it's a great song.
It's Me, O Lord (Standin' in the Need of Prayer)Favourite
The reason for choosing Hank Jones, and he's playing an old Southern spiritual called It's Meo Lord. I guess he's about eighty five, and he's just the coolest guy going. And I figure if you can grow old gracefully the way he does, and you can still play the piano the way he does. That's my objective.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:53What happens if we don't assert our dominance [over our pets]?
They hang around our houses waiting for opportunities. They're great observers of our behavior. In fact, they're better than we are of their behaviour. And they will slip into the voids that we leave. If you allow the dog up on the bed, initially because it's a puppy, well, it's on the bed. Then it grows into an adult, and dominance can kick in.
Presenter asks
3:15Does this kind of indulgence towards animals cross the classes?
Oh, sure. I had somebody in yesterday. A typical virtually late 1970s Kings Road punk. Her head was shaved, she had love and hate tattooed on her knuckles, and she was in because her rat has a mammary tumor. Well, the tears that she was shedding for her rat were as intense as the tears that will be shed by James Harriet's Mrs. Pumphrey. The relationship can be as intense, and it can be as intense with any living thing
Presenter asks
12:12What changed [after you failed veterinary medicine] and ended up top of the class?
It was more than a mild surprise to fail at something. And not knowing what to do, I got a job as a lab technician at the Virus Research Institute. I was given a responsibility to work on a project to determine the cause of an overwhelming loss of life in a couple of turkey farms. ... I just had no idea that veterinary medicine could be so exciting.
The keepsakes
The book
Ted Moores
I know I'm not supposed to leave the island, but I'd I take a book called Canoe Craft. All Canadians when they retire and can no longer do what they used to be able to do, Move out to the country to the cottage and build canoes. I'd really love to build a canoe. And the book is simply how to build the canoe.
The luxury
If it's permitted, a molecular engineering lab, because I would like to construct my own dog.
Presenter asks
13:57How did you cross the divide [to work with domestic animals]?
While I was at the zoo, I was offered a job by a vet working in central London. So I took the job and decided to stay for two years, gain experience in companion animals, in dogs and cats, and of course meet a variety of clients. And one of them was a small but perfectly formed blonde who came in ... My wife is Julia Foster.
Presenter asks
16:56How much do we differ from other nations in the way that we treat our dogs?
Well, in in various nations, other nations, dogs can be status symbols or icons of a specific group within that. In Far Eastern countries, the importation of Western breeds of dogs will exemplify importing Western culture. ... The relationship eventually becomes the same. It fascinates me how it takes only a generation for the relationship to to become the same.
Presenter asks
19:55How does training dogs silently work?
It became popular starting in the ... 70s, but there was a book written in the late 1960s by a silent order of monks in upstate New York. The Monks of New Skeet. And they felt to maintain the silence within the community that their dogs should be trained to sign commands, moving your arms up and down. And that evolved into using sign language, using hand movements, to train dogs in general.
“We allow our dogs and our cats to get away with things that we really wouldn't allow our children to get away with.”
“We like to think that we domesticated the wolf and created the dog, but it's far more likely that the wolf self domesticated.”
“We choose dogs or cats that either are manifestations of our own personalities or fill voids in our personalities.”
“There's no need to hit a dog.”