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  • Animals don’t set out to teach us anything at allbut we all have a lot to learn from our interactions with them nevertheless.

  • Imagine that we come back from work unusually late.

  • It’s been a tricky day: a threatened resignation, an enraged supplier, a lost document, two delayed trains.

  • But none of the mayhem is of any concern to one friend waiting by the door uncomplicatedly pleased to see us.

  • Pippi, a two-year-old Border Terrier with a continuous appetite for catching a deflated football in her jaws.

  • She wants to play in the usual way, even if it’s past nine o’clock now,

  • with us in the chair and her sliding around the kitchen, and, unexpectedly, so do we.

  • Were not offended by her lack of overall interest in us.

  • It’s at the root of our delight.

  • Here, at last, is someone wholly indifferent to almost everything about us except for our dexterity at ball-throwing,

  • someone who doesn’t care about the Brussels meeting,

  • who forgive us for not warning the finance department in time about the tax rebates and someone for whom the Lisbon conference is beyond imagining.

  • One of the most consoling aspects of animalsit might be a dog, a sheep, a lizard or a beetle

  • is that their priorities have nothing whatsoever to do with our own perilous and tortured agendas.

  • They are redemptively unconcerned with everything we are and want.

  • They implicitly mock our self-importance and absorption and so return us to a fairer, more modest sense of our role on the planet.

  • A sheep doesn’t know about our feelings of jealousy,

  • it has no interest in our humiliation and bitterness around a colleague; it has never emailed.

  • On a walk in the hills, it simply ambles towards the path were on and looks curiously at us,

  • then takes a lazy mouthful of grass, chewing from the side of his mouth as though it were gum.

  • Ducks nibble at the weeds, waddle down to the water and paddle about in circles without any interest in which century it happens to be from a human point of view;

  • theyve never heard of the economy; they don’t know what country they live in;

  • they don’t have new ideas or regret what happened yesterday.

  • They don’t care about the career hurdles or relationship status of the person who sprinkling a few bread crumbs near them.

  • Time around animals invite us into a world in which most of the things that obsess us have no significance

  • which corrects our characteristic over-investment in matters which make only a limited contribution to the essential task of existence, which is to be kind,

  • to make the most of our talents, to love and to appreciate.

  • We believe in making the world a more emotionally intelligent place. And to that end, we've now also published some extraordinary books.

  • As well as other merchandise that re-enforces some of the themes illustrated in our videos.

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Animals don’t set out to teach us anything at allbut we all have a lot to learn from our interactions with them nevertheless.

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