Posts for : November 2024

By Andreas Moser

 

Angela Merkel is afraid. The most “natural” explanation for fear is the presence of an actual danger. For example, being bitten or attacked by a wild animal, shot by a killer, falling while mountain climbing, or forgetting your lines while reciting on stage in front of an audience.

Zoophobias, however, are fears that do not solely arise from the presence of dangerous animals. They manifest regardless of whether wild animals are locked in zoos, dogs are kept on the leash or cats roam freely around the house when you visit their humans. A zooanthropologist knows very well that the history of civilization would have been different if our ancestors had not been scared of species such as mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, bears and wolves.

Angela Merkel is scared of dogs – cynophobia. For her, this fear is neither imaginary nor an expression of social reserve. It stems from a very real experience: she was once bitten by a dog. We know that Merkel and her family lived under Russian influence in former East Germany. Like Merkel, Putin’s cute dog might also know what it means to “be kept” by Russians.

Without jumping to conclusions, we notice that Angela Merkel shares her fear of dogs with Michael Jackson. Yet, despite his fear of mice, someone like Walt Disney could create the world’s most famous movie mouse, Mickey. However, it’s not my intention here to describe how Adolf Hitler curbed his cat phobia.

Personally, I struggle to understand why some people would like to keep fighting dogs, admire their fighting abilities and biting strength, and walk them in city parks. Nevertheless, it is absurd to assume that Putin acted in bad faith when he allowed his Labrador to roam freely during Merkel’s visit.

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By Amanda Minervini

Students today are facing a mental health crisis. According to surveys of college students, the percentage of students diagnosed with an anxiety disorder varies by source, but is generally between 34% and 37% according to this article, this study and this article  -> web surveys taken by 96,000 U.S. students across 133 campuses in the 2021-22 academic year. It found that 44% of students reported symptoms of depression.

I was born in the city of Bari, Southern Italy, with an inexplicable passion for horses since I can remember. As an early teen and without a driving license, I frequently and in a somewhat rocambolesque manner, managed to escape the concrete of the city to spend time with horses in our beautiful Apulian countryside. At age 25, I moved to the USA and began my graduate studies, during which these happy escapes became a lot harder and infrequent but I could never completely disconnect from horses. In 2022, as an assistant professor at Colorado College, I founded a nonprofit organization, the Equine-Guided Learning and Healing Experience (EGLHE) to help students develop meaningful relationships with animals, with a special focus on equines. EGLHE is my personal approach to supporting learning while paying attention to mental health, one that fosters a deep and transformative relationship between humans and equines, and which ultimately benefits everyone involved. My goals are to uproot anthropocentrism, to nurture emotional well-being, self-awareness, and mindfulness through equine-assisted learning. I studied equine behavior and ethology, as well as Warwick Schiller’s Attuned Horsemanship, Lockie Phillips’ Emotional Horsemanship, Rupert Isaacson’s Athena and Movement Method, Masterson Method, Balance through Movement Method, and horse brain seminars. I created my own ethology-based and ethical method blending principles from each of these approaches,

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