Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum

Bullriders, cowmen and girls, and animal husbandry

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2robots4u:
I agree with Jeff that it is the dog.  Front-Ranger, keep in mnid that the dog IS just 2 degrees separated from a wolf, so your pet is normal :) My neighbor has 3 full-grown Dobbies and when I go over, I just wait to see which one is going to attack...buy they are really kind animals, and they seem to like me, but I still keep up my guard. You know the story...once a wolf, always a wolf....Doug

Front-Ranger:
Okay, 2rob, but I am going to hold you and Jeff to substantiating your claim about the dog...I wanna see some proof!

And now, I am jumping ahead of myself here, but since people have short attention spans, I want to explain why I think these ancient myths have relevance to Brokeback Mountain and to today. I'll start by quoting from the book The Once and Future Goddess:


--- Quote ---Maleness is viewed as being entirely different from femaleness, excluding all that resembles his mother or her womb. The hero’s odyssey takes him away from all that, to “out there” where the sky’s the limit.
For 2,500 years, since the time of Aristotle, men have been talking about separation and difference and isolation as the human condition.
…
Males do not simply discard the aspects of themselves that they shared with their  mothers before their enforced separation, but later on after separation, those parts must be disclaimed and repressed, fought against and if need be distorted until they are unrecognized. It’s as if the best way for a boy child to keep from seeing those female things in himself, all unacceptable parts of himself, is to start actively demeaning them in others, attach disgusting labels to those aspects.

Elinor W. Gadon, quoting Wilshire and Wilshire, unpublished papers

--- End quote ---

Now I ask you to think back to the dozy embrace, and think about Ennis's words in that scene....

Penthesilea:

--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on December 03, 2006, 05:10:21 pm ---Okay, 2rob, but I am going to hold you and Jeff to substantiating your claim about the dog...I wanna see some proof!

--- End quote ---

From wikpedia:

The first animal to be domesticated appears to have been the dog, in the Upper Paleolithic era; this preceded the domestication of other species by several millennia. In the Neolithic a number of important species (such as the goat, sheep, pig and cow) were domesticated, as part of the spread of farming which characterises this period. The goat, sheep and pig in particular were domesticated independently in the Levant and Asia.

Here's the complete article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication

I've been loving dogs for my whole life. I've read many, many (really a huge amount) of specialized books about them. Believe me, dogs were the first domesticated animals (and not only "appear to have been" like the English wikipedia says).

The German wikipedia clearly says that dogs were indeed the first domesticated animals.

Additionally, I found the following information there:

Genetic calculation show that the wolf and the dog have genetically seperated about 125 000 years ago. The earliest proof is a mold (imprint?) of a dog's paw, which is ca. 23 000 years old.

Proof enough or should I go and search for more English sources?  :)

Front-Ranger:
Okay, okay, fine. Shall we split this topic into one devoted to dogs and the other to cows et al?? Cause I could say plenty about dogs by themselves, 'specially sheepdogs.

Front-Ranger:
Here is a fresco of ancient bullriders on the Greek island of Crete:

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