The Puzzle of Aggression

Part 2 — Check list 4 yo Weimaraner                          

Copyright Ozuna 2023

1.  Genetic high defense drive. Observed in both parents.

            Remedial focus: Drop defense drive, reward focused prey drive. Hand feeding at least half of food daily.

2.  Genetic low biddability.  Observed during training.

            Remedial focus: Hand feeding at least half of food. Increase eye focus, attention, and engagement.

3. Genetic low prey drive and subset genetic low hunt drive.

            Remedial focus: Increase food drive, increase ball drive.

4.  One trial learner for adrenaline based behaviors.  Multiple trial (and slow) learner for cognitive based behaviors.

            Remedial focus: Constant calibration of the following:  How much information to give. What rate/speed of information flow. What rate of sequencing. Duration of down time between training sessions.  

5.  Practiced aggression.  Endocrine reinforced OCD reactivity behavior.

            Remedial focus: Building replacement behaviors.  All the standard obedience commands for language   stability. Building more balanced metabolics through repetitive rhythmic movement. Building an offleash recall and 2x a day pack walks at a moving trot for a .5 hour. Herbal tincture (Tranquility Blend by Animals Apawthecary).

6.  Too high arousal levels.  Super high flashpoint, high prey drive when at arousal levels. Goes from 0 to over   the top with no middle ground. (Low prey drive when at normal arousal levels.)

            Remedial focus: Proprioception, proprioception, proprioception, nutrition (lower carbs, increase quality of absorbable proteins) and herbal tincture.

7.  Touch Diva. Intolerant of touch anywhere on her body.

            Remedial focus: Dr. Cheese Whiz — truly an unexpected ally. Very fond of her cheese whiz.

8.  Low proprioceptive quotient — impacting learning capacity through all six stages of learning: absorb, retain, sequence, generalize, extrapolate and problem solve information.

            Remedial focus: Proprioception exercises both through obstacles and out on the trail.     Simple movement puzzles (combinations of movements) using obstacles and the trail increasing in complexity.  Slowly increasing complexity of sequencing.

9.  Nutrition — original food at home decent but ever so slightly high in carbs, low in assimilable animal proteins.  

            Remedial focus: Dropped carbs, increased assimilable proteins. Observed a reset of arousal levels about every 5 days.

10.  Middle to low-ranking beta.  Admittedly used as an emotional dumping ground with no boundaries, limitations, clear structure or expectations during core developmental periods resulting in high levels of fear and insecurity in the dog.

            Remedial focus: Confidence building — touch, proprioceptive exercises, movement, commands,sequencing, clarity, reward.

***

Maryna Ozuna
http://www.dog-trainer-arizona.com
http://www.dogbodycare.com
movementmarkers@gmail.com

The Puzzle of Aggression

Part 1 — Article

Copyright Ozuna 2022

            On the many training groups I monitor, I keep reading questions posed or descriptions of dogs with “aggression” as if aggression were an on/off switch, as if somehow if we just find the right technique, attend the right clinic, watch the right video then we will figure out how to turn “it” off. Yet, aggression, and/or reactivity or behavioral imbalance is always a many splendored thing composed of multiple moving parts. I don’t even think of it like layers because there are so many pieces interacting simultaneously to create instability or a negative response to stimuli.  

            I thought it might be useful to parse the components of a dog I worked with who presented on my first introduction to her in the dog yard with snarling, charging, serious intent to bite. A 4 yo, spayed (at around 1 yoa) Weimaraner, she had bitten the male owner, and had been so reactive at her last vet visit that no one could get near her, and they had excused her.  She pulled out of her flat buckle collar before we could get a martingale on her for safety, and we had to lasso her to get a buckle on martingale on her.  

            Over the course of time working with her, she calmed down day by day as we put a complete holistic program in place.  Continuing evaluation of her in the process and detailed further questioning of the owners revealed the following rough profile of the components of this dog’s presenting instability.  This list is by no means exhaustive but gave me a working framework that I could use to shift behavior.  

Working Profile:

            1.  Genetic high defense drive.  Turned out that the parents of this litter had also exhibited a high level of reactivity to “stranger danger” and over the top defense drive response to visitors.  This is a breed that should have super low defense drive, so already we know the internal components are not lined up the way they should be.

            2.  Genetic low biddability.  Accompanying that was super low pack drive and its working component biddability — the desire to work with a handler. I had to build biddability one piece of food at a time.  Fortunately, in this particular case, I was able to build a decent food drive fairly rapidly. It is what saved us.  

            3.  Genetic low prey drive, especially hunt drive aspect.  This is supposed to be a bird dog breed which should have a high prey drive and within that hunt drive, but it was rock bottom when we started. Normally, with scrambled drives, we want to extinguish or diminish the inappropriate drive (here defense drive) and strengthen the core genetics that would bring out the best linked genetics in this dog — which would be hunt drive, but she had virtually none for me to strengthen. We had to build that artificially through food drive and then ball work.  Building correct drives rebalances the dog from the inside out. There are many linked behaviors that come with this drives that we can harness to use for creating overall balance in the brain and the body.

            4.  One trial learner/marinator.  Another not terribly useful component with this dog was that she was a one trial learner for adrenaline-based behaviors and a slow marinator (have to put away and let them think about it) for cognitive based behaviors.  I had to be really careful how much to present, at what rate of learning or sequencing, with lots of down time in between sessions to absorb the slower cognitive pieces I wanted her to acquire.  She was really fast to snatch adrenaline-based behaviors (a result of the high defense drive) and super slow to capture cognitive concepts. A common, but difficult little quirk in her learning capacity.

            5.  Practiced aggression.  Along with the genetic high defense drive she had hard wired practiced aggression. She had been allowed to charge the fence at the pool guy, and the lawn guy, and other visitors with increasingly ferocious attitude until she started doing the same behaviors with the male owner when he came home from business trips.  Practiced aggression is in many ways like an endocrine reinforced ocd behavior. There is also a patterned endocrine response that kicks in when dogs send themselves into arousal. She was 100% not allowed to practice any aggression behaviors of any kind whatsoever, we built and rebuilt opposing go to behaviors, and I used an herbal tincture Tranquility Blend by Animals Apawthecary, just one dropperful in her food at night for a week to help mute the overworked arousal response, and allow her a deeper sleep. 

            6.  Arousal levels too high.  When we started her adrenaline/arousal flash point was very very high. She was that person at a party who was wired just a little too tight.  The slightest thing would set her off into: reaction, confusion, panic, shutdown — it ran the gamut of responses but all were arousal-based behaviors.  Bumping into her was like a major calamity. Moving too quickly caused her eyes to dilate almost out of her head.  She was locked and loaded all the time in the beginning.  Work, food (a minor detail in her case, see below, but still significant), herbs, and a lot of getting out and moving over terrain to build proprioception and  hunt/prey drive helped shift that down so she could relax and be just a dog.  About every 5 days we could see a major downshift in the arousal/adrenaline load. It was fascinating to watch the transition occurring.

            7.  Touch diva.  When we started, she could not be touched anywhere.  She totally and completely dictated what, where, when, and how she could be touched — or not. Part of that was genetic, part of that was practiced arousal which makes all creatures, 2 legged or 4 hypersensitive to touch, and part of that was a lack of foundational training in touch tolerance.  The problem with touch defensiveness is it so rapidly becomes a self-fulfilling negative feedback loop. The more resistant she is to basic touch and handling, the more people are going to react to her, and the more she is going to react to them. In her case, it had escalated to levels where she could no longer even be allowed in her veterinary practice and my clients had great relationships with their vets, but her behavior and resistance to touch by anyone other than the one owner was just putting her beyond the pale. I only wish that I could tell you that my brilliant touch techniques brought her around. Hah. I have to laugh ‘cus yeah, I bring a lot of touch techniques to the equation, but it was really Dr. Cheese Whiz that did the work. This girl was a fool for cheese whiz. After a while she would just about stand on her head for a hit of cheese whiz. Another lucky turn of the dice.

8.  Low proprioceptive quotient.  Like nearly all reactive dogs, in her case part of her being a touch diva, not being handled enough, and not having an off-leash recall so she could move over terrain, she had a super low proprioceptive awareness of where her body was in space at any time. This greatly diminished her learning capacity in the beginning and accentuated the whole profile. As proprioception came up, reactivity came down, and learning capacity came up.

9.  Nutrition.  Last, in her particular case, nutrition was not that big of a kicker, but was surprisingly more than I expected. The food she was on was a really good food, but it did have a higher carbohydrate load than I would prefer to feed, and she was ever so slightly plump when we started. Really just slightly — like a low to mid 6 on the weight scale where I wanted to see her at a fit mid 5, right at that perfect balance point.  Where food has been a huge component of endocrine imbalance, unstable behaviors, I typically see a very rapid shift in behavior within 72 hours of a food switch, that then also typically resets even more every 3 days or so until it rapidly hits a whole different plateau and levels out at about day 10.  In her case, the change was much slower, a very small incremental reset about every five days, but over the course of weeks, it became patently apparent. Obviously, her whole body reset was the product of many factors, but the impact of the food and the steady increase in food drive and hunt drive and biddability were apparent and made the food shift significant.

            Hopefully parsing out this kind of analysis will allow trainers to reach a little deeper for the component pieces of unstable/reactive/ or aggressive behavior.

30 -30-30

***

Maryna Ozuna
http://www.dog-trainer-arizona.com
http://www.dogbodycare.com
movementmarkers@gmail.com

Movement Markers™

What is That?

                                    Copyright 2020 Ozuna

            Movement Markers™are a vast array of postural, conformational and movement pieces of information and concepts that provide indicia of a dog’s physical and behavioral health and attitude, reactivity, drives and overall mental and temperamental balance. The following components and their potential behavioral implications are just a few of the Movement Markers™we look at.

— Symmetry and parity side to side

            What obstacles are there to learning and retaining learning?

— Conjunctive and dysjunctive aspects to the body

            What mixed signals are being sent to other dogs?

— Point of balance

            Where are the balance points of arousal, impulsion, collection?

— Integration of body front to back

            Literally is the brain connected to the body?

— Whether the movement is “through” from front to back

            How quickly and well will new information be integrated?

— The flight pattern of the legs

            Is the dog in balance or shifted towards physical instability and perhaps behavioral instability?

— The integrity of the foot falls

            How much tension is there in the body?  How much stability or instability?

— The flexion or lack thereof in the body

            What ability does the dog have to handle pressure or integrate stimuli?

— Areas of stiffness in the body

            How much resistance to learning will there be?

— Areas of dysfunction in the body

            What impediments to learning, physical or behavioral stability are there?

— Angulation and rotation of the shoulders

            How much stress is the dog exhibiting?

— Lift and fall of the chest       

            Where is the dog on an aggression scale from 1 to 10?

— Suppleness or lack thereof in the hindquarters

            Where is the dog on an aggression scale from 1 to 10?

— Integration of the forequarters

            Is impulsion grounded in stability?

— Smoothness or lack thereof in the coupling between forequarters, neck, and head

            How easily can this dog come back in balance after stimuli?

— Proportions of topline to underline

            What is the natal balance point and natal temperament of the dog?

— Proportions of topline to leg length

            How much has that natal balance been supported or distorted by nutrition, development, and training or lack thereof?

            These are just some of the pieces of the Movement Markers™puzzle we look at, and all of these pieces can act together or separately to impact the behavioral profile.

***

Maryna Ozuna
http://www.dog-trainer-arizona.com
http://www.dogbodycare.com
movementmarkers@gmail.com

For nearly 40 years now, since my Dad first made soccer players dribble tennis balls and move over grids, I have been experimenting with the impact of exercises promoting the development of proprioception in humans, horses, and dogs.  In the past 20 years, when I have been focused more in the dog world, I have seen proprioception work help reorganize the brains of hundreds of dogs: increasing and maximizing learning capacity, slowing and focusing “squirrel” brain, softening reactivity, increasing visual focus, increasing handler connection, increasing confidence, decreasing stress, increasing engagement, and just generally helping build a more balanced brain and balanced attitude. Over the years, we have honed and honed the components of what I now refer to as Movement Markers™ High Density Low Impact Proprioception Courses (HDLIP Courses) to maximize impact in a short, discrete exercise. (See below at the end for the essential components as we know them at this time.)

            While we have always had a senior dog or two in the mix during these exercises at clinics, with them I was more focused on preserving certain levels of physicality. I was not particularly focused on the potential mental health perks for our elder dogs. While I had seen many senior dogs clearly enjoy the courses, I had not observed clear trends to the behaviors. However, we also did not have the courses and protocols developed to the degree we have now, which I think is a critical difference. What I had the great privilege and pleasure of observing and learning at a recent clinic in Charlotte was that our HDLIP courses had the capacity to turn on a Senior dog brain to the point that we were all dumbfounded watching it happen.  Yes, I personally have done innumerable enrichment protocols with my elders, but I can honestly say, I have never seen anything turn on senior dogs like a light switch within moments, the way our course did that weekend. And it wasn’t just me observing this.  Everyone was calling out and pointing and watching our elders sparkle. The eyes just lit up. Chests came up. Tails came up.  Stiff dogs started prancing.  Each and every elder from four different households had the same response.  So exciting to see.

            Our work with the dogs that weekend deeply enhanced my perception of the potential impact of High Density Low Impact Proprioceptive Courses on not just the physicality of our senior dogs, but their mental health as well.  (As always with all dogs but especially with senior dogs, within appropriate medical limits, of course.)

            Protocol: Here are the critical components of the MM™ High Density Low Impact Proprioceptive Courses (HDLIP courses) as we know them at this time for whatever age dog. This work is continually evolving so stay tuned!!!

                        1. Course work should be done with the dog in a properly fitting martingale (so it just slips over the cheekbones or on a snap-around has only 2 fingers of slack) narrow as possible, with the martingale spun so the leash is coming off the top between the shoulder blades. This supports the head and neck and forequarters in a very particular way. Working the dog in a slip lead, flat buckle collar or other equipment, all of which by their physical components, can trigger oppositional reflex does NOT create the same mental impact and I ONLY use martingales for this exercise.  (I don’t make the rules, I am merely reporting what we have seen after thousands of reps of trial and error.)

                        2.  These courses are done in an exaggerated slow motion, ONE STEP AT A TIME to individuate the legs and maximize proprioceptive impact to the brain. THIS IS ESSENTIAL. Nothing happens without this exaggerated slow motion.

                        3. 12 obstacles seems to be the magic number of obstacles, which we sometimes set up as two parallel lines about 6′ apart of obstacles, or in a curving arc.

                        4. The sturdier the obstacles the better and deeper the learning. Plastic obstacles work to a certain extent but we do not see quite the depth of response.

                        5. Obstacles should be fairly close together, just a couple of paces apart again for maximum impact. Urban agility courses serve a different purpose and are typically laid out with the obstacles farther apart. Here we are trying to create a very specific brain impact.

                        6.  Varying components of up, down, over and through with different textures seems to be key as well.

                        7.  To the extent possible, the handler needs to not solve the puzzles for the dog but LET THEIR BRAIN work. Leash should be used to help balance the dog, where necessary,  but as little as possible, and as little as possible between obstacles, letting body language and a little bit of food luring, if necessary, do the work. Do NOT pull the dog from obstacle to obstacle with a tight leash.

            Have fun with all the dogs, but for a special gift put back a bit of sparkle in a senior dog’s eyes.

***

Maryna Ozuna
http://www.dog-trainer-arizona.com
http://www.dogbodycare.com
movementmarkers@gmail.com

Puppies and small dogs are still quadripeds and should not be picked up like a bipedal human baby.

Nor should they be cradled like a human baby. Again, their spines and pelvis were not meant to be bent in this way.

Instead, they should be picked up with their bodies level, horizontal, in plane with the ground, fingers supporting hooked under the front of the sternum, forearm reaching under from the far side, cradling the pup in like a football.

No shibas were harmed in the taking of these pictures….wink.

Maryna Ozuna

movementmarkers@gmail.com

520 266 3124

Where did the concepts, exercises and techniques behind the Movement Markers™ Clinics come from and why are these concepts remotely relevant to dog trainers, or dog owners, who have enough on their plates just dealing with the challenges of building solid behaviors and preventing or eliminating chaos in modern dogs.

When I began training dogs professionally, many years ago now, I brought with me a background in human and horse sports, as well as many hours of actual hands on bodywork sessions on humans, horses, and dogs.  We all look at the world through the blinders of the tools we bring to the equation, and my tool was movement, and movement analysis.

As a result, I was one of the first in this modern era (these concepts have been around for forever) to talk about the many ways in which proprioception (simplified — body awareness and coordination) or lack of proprioception in modern dogs was affecting their overall physical and mental balance and the training equation.  When I began teaching these concepts in clinics, the only other person really writing much about this in dogs was Suzanne Clothier, and the bunch of crazies who were starting this sport called agility, who were more focused on giving modern suburban dogs something to do with their brains than they were about the scientific underpinnings of how movement affected learning.  My focus on movement and proprioception led to clinic exercises, articles, the development of concepts like Five Week Puppy Syndrome, puppy enrichment development, hands on techniques specifically for the canine, movement warning flags to subclinical gait issues that we needed to take into account during training, recognizing gait issues that needed to be evaluated by our veterinary colleagues, building partnerships in the veterinary community and daily discussions about all these issues on professional email lists before the advent of social media.

Fast forward to the present, when I am being flooded on a daily basis with pix and video from colleagues around the country checking in to ask if there is “anything going on with this dog” that will affect their ability to learn.  Just yesterday alone, I looked at:

1. 7 mo Pitty cross with exaggerated roaching in the back, disproportionate growth patterns in the long bones of the legs, and disparate curvature from one leg to another.
2. Mastiff pup with an overly straight, splayed hind end, weight disproportionately tipped on the forehand (even for a normal adolescent of nearly any breed who will carry more weight on the forehand at various stages of development), no ability to flex or collect behind, and impaired longitudinal, lateral, and rotational flexion,
3. Golden pup whose hind end movement looked like an egg beater gone wild…that was not the result of just being a pup, but again disparate growth patterns,
4. St. Bernard pup we had seen in pix since babyhood, (thanks to a colleague) whose owner’s insistence on garbage food was now causing distortion at every growing plate and joint,
5. A comparison between movement in a docked vs. undocked Rotties of related blood lines,
6. Ayoung mixed breed agility competitor with disparate muscle development from side to side in the hind legs, torsion in the gait, and a stiffness in the back and one hind leg that are the kind of profile that raises concerns about an unhappy knee.

We are not veterinarians, thanks be to God.  Nor do I have any pretensions or desire to be one.  But animal husbandry and basic knowledge of movement falls squarely in our wheel house.  We need to know when there is an issue that needs to be referred over to our veterinary colleagues, we need to document for them what we are seeing, and we need to know when there are issues that are going to affect our training strategies, sequences, tool choices and timing.

I am seeing a vast variety of circumstances that squarely affect learning readiness, learning capacity, and behavioral profiles of the dogs sent to us for training.  These things directly impact the dog’s ability to benefit from our training efforts and constitute substantial impediments to learning that must be taken into account if we are to achieve results for the dogs and their owners.  Some of the most common categories we are seeing for which we have developed protocol include:

1. Proprioceptive deficits that affect the dog’s ability to uptake training information, retain information, sequence, generalize and extrapolate information.
2. Subclinical gait abnormalities that affect learning readiness and capacity.(“There’s something about this dog that just doesn’t look quite right.”)
3. A marked uptick in the resurgence of various bone growth development issues including panosteitis (pano) that need to be referred out to our veterinary colleagues.A situation which is only going to get worse with the current onslaught of canine corporate food marketing strategies.
4. Undiagnosed or under treated clinical gait abnormalities that need to be referred out before, or atleast concurrent with, training so a dog’s learning is not impeded by pain or discomfort.Again, not remotely our job to diagnose, or treat, but it is our job to recognize that perhaps this animal needs to be referred out.
5. And a new and disturbing category of dogs with bone growth development issues from an utter and complete lack of necessary movement during puppy development.I have now seen 7 of these cases in the last few months, like nothing I have ever seen before, all the exact same profile of a larger breed youngster kept in a too small space with no migratory movement — straight line movement from place to place — i.e. walks, with weird bone growth issues, and concomitant massive behavioral imbalances up to and including severe aggression in uncharacteristic breeds.  Pups literally never taken out of a small yard, and never taken for a walk for a whole host of reasons, but primarily, basic lack of training ability of a larger sized puppy when it outgrows the cute butterball stage of life.

Normal, healthy bone development in living creatures requires healthy, progressive stressing, i.e. movement.  Dogs are genetically programmed to move, and that genetic code requires certain actions to be fulfilled during development of their bone structure, or it does not develop correctly.  Puppies need to run and play and be taken for long walks, long being relative to a puppy.  The training trail here on soft ground is a half mile trail and the youngsters do that 2 to 3 x a day when they are here for training.

In response to these floodgates, I developed Movement Markers™ Clinics to help my colleagues

— be able to identify what normal movement and structure in a canine looks like, feels like, sounds like,

— be able to identify when is there a deviation from normal movement that constitutes a problem that may act as an impediment to learning,

— learn how to use a variety of visual assessment protocols to identify gait abnormalities,

— know when to refer those out (always if any question whatsoever),

— how to help that pup/dog and owner when it comes back into our wheelhouse with appropriate training and pre-training strategies, tool selection, tool placement, proprioceptive exercises, hands on sports therapy assessment tools, and hands on bodywork tools for the enhancement of physical integrity for the dog.

There are many pieces of the dog training puzzle.  Hopefully, these clinics can add necessary and useful information to anyone interested in maximizing learning and maintaining the best physical integrity in our own and our clients’ dogs.

Copyright all photos and text S.A. Ozuna 2015

1.

Walking the bones of the earth,
seeing the accretions of time,
glimpses of hidden truths,
half truths, new truths,
a palimpsest of history.

When we look at man,
what do we see?
Do we see the eye of the soul,
or merely the accretions of the years,
a contextual crust of many layers.

2.

We are born naked,
and immediately begin
the accumulation of sedimentary debris.

Family,
geography,
history,
religion,
school,
work,
experiences,
seasons,
smells,
memories,
the topological markers
of our souls.

3.

Like minerals on the wall of a cliff,
our accumulations color us,
create the texture of our lives.

We are both enriched by their content,
and separated by the walls they build.

Looking out and looking in,
the world is inevitably distorted
by the kaleidoscope prism
of our accretions.

We see out dimly through our layers,
and the world, looking back, sees
nothing but crust.

4.

We need to go walkabout
through the layers of the earth,
the layers of each other,

We need to steal from the great lions,
see with cat’s eyes,
piercing through layers
to flesh and bone.

We need to wade through family,
geography, history, religion,
school, work, experiences,
seasons, smells, and memories,
to the eye of the soul,
touch naked hearts.

Earthquakes will happen.
The earth will cleave in two,
shattered by compassion,
riven by history.

5.

5.
At night, we watch TV,
and weep tears of the moon,
at the images of drowning babies,
while in the morning we reiterate
there is no room at the inn.

Six million lives lost,
their voices echoing on the wind,
Surely we can find room,
there are ghosts holding place markers.

My heart seen from space
would have ley lines of sorrow
for my beloved earth,
her broken creatures,
and wounded mantle.

6.

Hourly, I feel her wounds.
Not a day goes by that
I don’t doctor her cuts.

And I ask, “Who are these merchants of death
who profit from the arms,
that turn to dust
the temples of Palmyra.
Who profits?”
For therein lie the secrets and the power.

7.

Those who profit,
glory in our walls,
delight in our separation,
bang the drums of celebration of our layers,
their important, their sacred solemnity,
and draw lines on the planet.

8.

So, I walk,
holding conversations with the earth,
stripping myself naked,
dreaming of a world without lines,
a world without walls.

Copyright all photos and text S. A. Ozuna 2015

     

     Dawn sky swirling with the tattered remnants of last night’s storm, clouds capturing and defining color, space, distance.  Light, that voluptuous Sonoran storm light perfusing morning chores.  Flash of black and yellow, liquid trills of bird call from the corral fence.  A welcome pair of new visitors, meadow larks have arrived to announce the morning.  The mountains are backdropped in virga black, a rainbow arching across their face.  Soft purling of wind flutters the pine needles.

     Every day, I hear the earth screaming in pain at the senseless, and unrelenting destruction of her nature.  Glacier National Park, soon to be nothing but a historical reference of what glaciers used to be, and the elephants, the elephants keening their death knells, estimated to be gone in 30 years absent radical intervention.  These things haunt my waking moments, and writhe through my veins at night.  And yet nature is endlessly generous, providing daily moments of precious beauty.

     Why write about a shaft of light, a flicker of wing in a world gone mad?? When lives are being lost, when anger and hatred seem to have become the norm.not some unusual rendering of the fabric of society, but every day bread and butter, what does it matter, the chiaroscuro rendering of a morning’s cloud painting??  Why pay attention to a moment.

     Because moments matter.  Because these fleeting moments of beauty remind us of the integrity of nature, of its intrinsic value.  They are a snapshot of nature’s vast soul.  They remind us of the difference between grace and destruction.  They provide reference markers between routine and possibility.  In a world that too often seems to be marching on a one way trip to annihilation, moments of beauty keep me, if not sane, at least marching forward within a sanity zone of tolerance.  Moments of beauty restore shreds of hope to my vision of the future.  They are the wind beneath my somewhat life battered and aging wings.