I have always loved dogs.  My first dog was a wire-haired fox terrier called Scotty, whose irritating habit it was to snap up the daily paper as soon as it was delivered and run under the house with it every afternoon.  Guess who had to crawl after him every day after school to retrieve the family’s news?

My next dog was a beautiful pedigree rough-coated collie called Stornoway Dandy, given to me by two elderly ladies in Grace Road when they could no longer look after him, and after I got to know him when delivering their copy of the Bay of Plenty Times.

Since then, I have lost none of my love of dogs and, fortunately, my wife shares my enthusiasm.  Dogs have been part of our family throughout our marriage; for the last 40 years our dogs have been West Highland White Terriers, sometimes one at a time and sometimes in pairs.

The pleasure our dogs have brought us has often led me to wonder what it is that brings humans and dogs together in a relationship that is so rewarding to both parties.  In return for the pleasure they give us, they of course, if they are lucky in their human masters, receive the care and sustenance that they would otherwise be unable to find.

Dogs, in their relationship with us, have of course been much more than pets.  They have been faithful servants, often – as in opening up the South Island high country, or in crucial rescue efforts, or helping the police or armed forces – bringing great benefit to humankind.

And today, dogs are taking on new roles – as comforts to those who are terminally ill, or as companions and guides to those, like the blind, who need help, or even as detectors of particular kinds of illness.

But, our relationship with them goes well beyond the utilitarian.  Even as workers, dogs have shown a remarkable ability to enter into our lives, sharing them with us, seeming to see the world through our eyes, and teaching us some of life’s most important lessons.

More than any other creature with which we inter-relate, dogs are able to align themselves with us, to play their part in our world – indeed, they seem to imagine themselves to be one of us.  As pack animals, they live happily in a pack including us and – no doubt more than we deserve – are ready to recognise us as pack leaders.

The special relationship depends on the way that each species recognises the particular qualities of the other.  Dogs, more than any other animal, seem to have the same emotional range that we do, and display those emotions without inhibition and in ways we can recognise.

And they have, it seems, a level of intelligence – both emotional and intellectual – that allows their human partners to see in them many human characteristics.  No other species displays such understanding and empathy in human terms – sometimes at a level beyond our own comprehension.

But there is one further – and very important – reason for the affinity that many humans feel with dogs.  We see in dogs many of the qualities that we most admire and appreciate.  But when we meet them in humans, those qualities often come with baggage attached – as part, if you like, of a bargain where a quid pro quo must be offered.

With dogs, though, the loyalty, the sensitivity to our needs, the commitment, the pleasure they show when we appear after absence, the affection – yes, the love – are offered unconditionally.  And they are offered to any one of us, not because we are wealthy or famous or successful, but because we and dogs treat each other as loyal and valued friends and then live that friendship on terms that suit us both.

They help us learn the rewards of showing love and kindness to, and the pleasure of thinking of and showing consideration for, another creature – lessons of huge benefit to children as they grow up.  Human society would be better and more harmonious if we learned more from dogs.

Yes, as you will gather, I am quite keen on dogs, and on my own little Westie, Lachie, in particular.  Our lives are the better for having him with us.

Bryan Gould

23 February 2017

Rugby, as we all know, is a tough game – and the contention it generates is not limited to the field itself.  The physical contest on the field is so intense that it is not surprising that collisions occur and injuries are suffered – and those episodes can in turn produce, all too easily, allegations of dirty play and breaches of the rules.

Sadly, allegations of this sort seem to have become a feature over recent years of All Black matches in the northern hemisphere.  It is hard to avoid the suspicion that, the more often they win, the more frequent such charges become.

The All Black record of success has been so extraordinary that it is not perhaps surprising that, rather than acknowledge that the better team won, disappointed fans will cast around for other explanations of All Black dominance.  Egged on often by home-town media, fans naturally seek solace by voicing suspicions that the All Blacks prevail, not by virtue of superior skills, tactics and commitment, but because they play illegally.

Over much of his long and distinguished career, for example, Richie McCaw’s astonishing skill as a ball pilferer was attributed in some quarters to his ability to break the rules and get away with it.  Some supposed fans enjoyed referring to him as “Richie McCheat” – surely a mean-minded and ungenerous refusal to recognise one of the game’s greatest exponents.

More recently, and particularly this year, All Black victories have been explained away on the grounds that the All Blacks “play dirty” and intentionally try to intimidate and injure their opponents.

The supposed failure of the responsible officials to identify and punish such illegality is then explained by yet another popular myth – that referees are unwilling to apply the rules to the All Blacks, either because they are dazzled by the All Blacks’ reputation or are somehow frightened to do so.

These myths are not reserved just for the post-match analysis.  They have increasingly become a factor during the game itself.  Fired up, no doubt, by the media, rugby crowds at All Black away games have quickly learned that they can put officials under considerable pressure by complaining loudly about supposed infractions of the rules – and it takes a strong-minded referee to withstand that kind of pressure.

Why is it that these attitudes seem to come to the fore particularly in games against northern hemisphere opponents?  All Black victories against teams in the southern hemisphere are more usually given the worth they deserve – as simply reflections of superior ability.  All Black wins are, presumably, just as unpalatable to the supporters of the Springboks, Wallabies and Pumas, but are rarely greeted with the kind of complaints we hear when the ABs are playing on the end-of-season tour.

It is presumably not that northern hemisphere crowds are markedly more ignorant than crowds elsewhere.  It seems rather to reflect a frustration and puzzlement that a small country from so far away can, with such impressive regularity and over such a long period, produce world-beating teams against countries whose rugby is supported by much larger financial resources and playing numbers.

Rather, it seems, it is just too painful to accept that the All Blacks are just better exponents of what is their national game.  There must be a hidden explanation, if not in supposed thuggery and cheating, or incompetent referees, then perhaps in deviously luring players away from their Pacific homelands – though the composition of some of the current teams in the northern hemisphere means that we hear less of this calumny nowadays.

I remember as a ten year-old listening in 1949 to radio reports as the exploits of a goal-kicking prop forward called Okey Geffin led to a 4-0 series whitewash of Fred Allen’s All Blacks in South Africa.  New Zealand rugby’s response?   They didn’t cry foul – they knuckled down and won the series against South Africa seven years later.

All Black dominance will not, of course, last forever – but we should enjoy it while it does.  And when it does end, let us hope it’s not for too long, and that we react with more good sense and sportsmanship than is shown by those who lose to us today.

Bryan Gould

27 November 2016

My first awareness of the All Blacks was as a nine year-old, when Fred Allen’s 1949 team played the Springboks in South Africa, and a combination of home-town referees and a goal-kicking prop called Okey Geffin consigned the All Blacks to a four-nil whitewash.

I am no stranger, then, to All Black defeats.  Every time the All Blacks take the field, I recognise the possibility that they will lose – and that is how it should be.  Sport is not sport unless there is a genuine contest – and that means that winning should never be a certainty.

And so it proved in Chicago.  That day had to come.

Ireland were the better team on the day.  They out-thought, out-passioned and outplayed the All Blacks, who were undone by their perennial tendency to give away penalties and by selection errors – why did the absence of probably the best locking pair in the world mean that we began a match against a top-class opponent without two specialist locks?

Most of all, they were undone by the excellence of the Irish who thoroughly deserved their win.  I would have put money, with the score at 33-29 in the dying minutes, on the All Blacks scoring the try that would have won the match – but it was Ireland who came up with the decisive score.

The result has of course produced great celebrations in Ireland and there is no shortage of those beyond Ireland’s shores who have been quick to welcome the All Blacks’ defeat.  The result, they say, is good for world rugby – and they are right – but it may be good for All Black rugby too.

This is a team that has scaled every summit – a number one world ranking for a record time and by a record margin, two World Cups in succession, an overflowing Trophy cabinet and a world record succession of wins (yes, I know about Cyprus).  It is that latter distinction which, I believe has become not just a distraction but a burden as well.

The All Blacks have been, for virtually the whole of my life, not only the world’s pre-eminent rugby team – some would now say the pre-eminent international team in any sport.  But the possibility of defeat has always been there; it is that which adds lustre to their achievements and spice to every encounter.

For years, though, they were said to carry a monkey on their backs – their puzzling failure, despite their dominance, to win a World Cup to add to their triumph in the inaugural tournament.  That accursed animal (as well as the ridiculous label of “chokers” foisted on them by their detractors) has been well and truly dislodged by their World Cup wins in 2011 and 2015.  But a new one has appeared.

The achievement of the world record of successive wins has created a new burden for them to bear.  They are no longer weighed down by the expectation that they will win every World Cup tournament.  But, as they recorded one win after another to achieve the world record, and then set out to extend it, the expectation arose they would go on winning – that they were not just the best but were invincible.

Invincibility has no place in sport.  There must always be the possibility that competitors could win – or lose.  We must not saddle the All Blacks with that expectation.  Every match is a new challenge.  We must be satisfied that – week in, week out, and for as long as possible – the All Blacks will go on showing that they are the best rug y team on the planet, always seeking to improve, and will therefore go into every match as the team to beat, the team that demands the best from their opponents.

But that does not, should not, cannot, mean that they must win every match.  The real possibility of defeat in every match they play is what makes the All Blacks great – and no one knows that better than they do.  As they set off for further matches in Italy and France, and a re-match in Dublin, they should be encouraged by our support and by our understanding that being the best is good enough – and an awareness that every victory is a possible loss avoided.

Bryan Gould

7 November 2016

In what proved to be her last television interview before her untimely death, Helen Kelly explained that her antipathy to Donald Trump was because he was “so unkind”, and she went on to say “I want people just to be kind.”

This was more than simply the dying wish of a good woman.  In identifying “kindness” as the quintessential human virtue, she expressed a central truth about our world.

We all know what “kind” means.  “Kindness” is a virtue we all recognise.  It is so much part of our lives, if we are lucky, that we are inclined to overlook its importance.

Kindness means being gentle, being thoughtful, being compassionate, being tolerant, being generous, acting with goodwill, wanting to please and to give pleasure, thinking of others – we can all elaborate on our own definitions.  But kindness is unmistakable when we come across it – and, whether directed to each other or to animals, it is always welcome and gives us pleasure when we do.

It is the highest and truest expression of what it means to be human.  It recognises our special responsibilities as humans – those that arise because, by virtue of our intelligence, rationality and accumulated knowledge, we understand more clearly not only the joys and opportunities of our existence, but also the pitfalls and the precariousness of that existence.

Those responsibilities are owed first to our fellow-humans.  We understand that to live according to the model Tennyson described as “nature red in tooth and claw”, where we each compete with and seek to do down everyone else, is a recipe for disaster – for pain, loss, suffering, for – in a word – “unkindness”.  We need look only at the tragedy of Aleppo to see where that leads.

“Kindness”, on the other hand, invites us to recognise and celebrate our common humanity – the one quality we can all be sure of sharing at the moment of birth.  Who can tell at that moment what fortune has in store for us, what qualities we will enjoy or lack and what use we will make of them?  The one thing we know is that, in that state of ignorance, we would willingly enter human society only on the basis that we all started off entitled to the same level of respect and basic rights by virtue of the common humanity we all share.

The failure to treat each other kindly can lead only to more conflict, unhappiness and unfairness, more distress and disappointment, to more resentment and violence, to a society – even for those members of it that do best – that is literally unhappy with itself.

A society that accepted that kindness was the basis of our relations with all others we come across would obviously be a happier place – but it would also be safer place.  It is surely now becoming apparent that we have limited time in which to learn some pretty important lessons.

We now know, or should, that by virtue of the knowledge we have acquired, we are now uniquely able – if we so wish – to destroy ourselves.  The means of doing so are clearly available.  Nuclear weapons, chemical and biological warfare, are no longer the stuff of science fiction but are current realities and are increasingly likely to be deployed – as they have been already.

And those willing against all rationality and common sense to use them can readily be identified.   Think only of a Donald Trump – yes, him again – with his finger on the nuclear trigger, or of a Kim Jong-Un playing the big man, or of religious extremists convinced that destroying the world will guarantee them a place in heaven.  If we go on as we are, being unkind to each other, playing up our differences, competing against each other to the nth degree, ignoring our common humanity, it is only a matter of time.  It is not the survival of the fittest, but survival pure and simple, that is at stake.

Our special responsibilities extend not only to our fellow humans.  If we get it wrong, we destroy not only ourselves but all other living creatures and the planet itself.

By virtue of our achievements, and our knowledge of the world, however, we have a chance to recognise these dangers, and to learn the lessons we need to apply if they are to be avoided.  We need to rise above what some may see as our natural instincts, and to achieve a more advanced state of existence based on an elevated understanding of our true situation.

We cannot afford to let the accidents of evolution determine who and what survives and what does not.  We need to intercede, to take a hand in shaping our own evolution, to recognise the responsibilities we owe, by virtue of our superior knowledge, to all our fellow-creatures.

We need quite consciously to educate and train ourselves, starting with our own immediate communities, so that we treat each other better, with common humanity.  Helen Kelly, having devoted her life to persuading us to treat each other kindly, got it right on her deathbed as well – perhaps even more right than she knew.  Kindness is not only the key to our happiness and success as a species but to our very survival as well.

Bryan Gould

17 October 2016

In sport, as in the rest of life, success is not always accompanied by applause and approbation.  It can often attract resentment, envy and criticism.

Rugby is no exception.  The unparalleled success enjoyed by the All Blacks over such a long period is most often greeted by sports fans around the world with praise, enjoyment and wonder.  But there is always a substantial fringe of supposed rugby fans – usually from overseas – for whom that success is not to be celebrated for the skill and commitment it represents but is to be diminished and denigrated by those who cannot bear to see a team from another country garnering plaudits for its dominance.

Anyone with a stomach strong enough to read the readers’ comments that are often published following match reports in overseas newspapers will have become enured to the spiteful and churlish attempts to devalue the All Blacks’ performance.  Many of these “rugby fans” profess to see in the ABs’ exploits nothing more than a willingness to play dirty and break the rules, and when the authorities mysteriously fail to agree with them, they take refuge in another bolt hole – the All Blacks, they assert, enjoy some sort of miraculous immunity from the usual laws and penalties.

Most such comments can be dismissed without a moment’s thought, since those making them are so manifestly lacking in any knowledge of the game or of its administration.  But there are those who should, and do, know better, and who should be challenged when they persist in trying to make anything worth drinking from such sour grapes.

The last test match against the Wallabies, and the alleged “eye-gouging” by Owen Franks, provide a leading, and regrettable, example.  We can perhaps excuse a Michael Cheika, desperate for something – anything – to divert attention from yet another defeat, for his attempt to focus on the alleged incident; and we can certainly agree that the footage shown ad nauseam on our screens demonstrates that it is unwise to allow a hand to get anywhere near an opponent’s face.

But what is less forgivable is the alacrity with which some professional commentators in the northern hemisphere jumped on the bandwagon, and enthusiastically supported a complaint that even the alleged victim did not wish, to his credit, to pursue.  One could almost hear the sighs of relief from a Stephen Jones or a Brian O’Driscoll that there was something about yet another All Black victory that might allow them to comment negatively rather than positively.

Commentators such as these have form.  They are both renowned for the grudges they bear against not only the All Blacks, but against the New Zealand rugby public and even against the country itself.  O’Driscoll at least has the excuse that he was the victim of a shockingly unfortunate accident in a Lions match in New Zealand when he was the tourists’ captain.

Where he goes beyond what is reasonable, however, is his unwillingness to accept that his injury was caused unintentionally and was not the result of deliberately foul play, and that any complaint about its treatment should be laid at the door of the judiciary and not of New Zealand rugby.  Instead, he has all too predictably  used the Franks incident to re-ignite the charge that the All Blacks play dirty and have some special dispensation that allows them to get away with it.

Stephen Jones has no such excuse.  As far as I know, the All Blacks and New Zealand have never done him an injury, either physical or metaphorical, but have instead treated him as a welcome guest when he has visited these shores.  Yet the Sunday Times’ experienced rugby correspondent has returned to the Lion’s tour and the O’Driscoll accident in order to persuade his readers that the Franks episode is just the latest instance in a long-established pattern of All Black foul play, and blind eyes suffered not just by their opponents but by officials as well.

Jones’ comments might easily be dismissed as an aberration if it were not for the animus he has displayed against the All Blacks over a long period.  His relationship with southern hemisphere rugby has always been somewhat fractious, going back to the early days of Super rugby which he dismissed as candy-floss, with little to commend it in terms of forward play or defensive rigour.

As to what that animus might be based on, we can only speculate.  The best bet seems to be that – to do him some sort of justice – he lives and feels his rugby so keenly that he literally cannot bear to see the teams he supports beaten so regularly and comprehensively by a team from a small and faraway country.  What he seems to seek is some sort of release or catharsis that allows him to excuse their defeats by attributing them to factors other than their own deficiencies or the merits of their All Black opponents.

The best advice we can offer him – and Brian O’Driscoll, who famously lost every match he played against the All Blacks – is that it’s just a game.  It’s just that the All Blacks are very good at it.  And did Malakai Fekatoa ever get his boot back?

Bryan Gould

5 September 2016