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Natural History 
Robin had a Pug dog. Robin died of asphyxiation.
Odd? Could a gasping dog cause a suicidal person to choose asphyxiation, over a quicker death? I doubt it. But you never know.
Think Robin ever read about breathing surgery for pugs? Ever get a comment from his house? Why would Robin Williams kill himself?
I really really doubt it. I know I had suicidal urges before and still a little bit now despite having non brachy pets that breathed perfectly well. Asphyxiation is just another way to go and could of been anything.
Your reaching a bit hard to try to relate it to the world of dogs I`m thinking.
Oh Paddyannie, you just don’t understand do you. Can you imagine if you told someone that you had cancer, and the reply was ‘just get over it’. Well that is what people who have depression get quite often. It’s not a mood that takes over every now and then, it’s complete and utter emptiness and it can give you incredible physical pain as well. I know this because i have two family members with this illness and the toll it has taken on the whole family is immense. The trouble is this is an illness every bit as insidious as cancer or heart disease, and in fact when you have more than one episode of serious depression it can actually shorten you life span by 20 years, so to say ‘why did he kill himself’ shows me that you have never shaken hands with the ‘black dog’. You can have all the fame, money and everything that goes with it and despite it all there is complete and utter desolation. I once came across a quote which I believe sums up Robyn Williams which said ‘behind my smile is everything you’ll never understand”
What a lovely memory – Robin with KoKo. Thanks so much for that.
Hi Marg, maybe you are right. I thought I understood because I have had some stressful times when life was hard and success impossible. But I didn’t want to die, I just really wanted my life to get better.
Life can suck, suck your fortunes and happiness out of you like a pack of dementors. But life goes on, you leave your misfortunes behind you, get up and go on. That is how it has to be. But nobody can tell you to change your mood, just to continue on despite the set backs.
I never thought of Robin William as a happy person, but as an actor. His smile would flash, but there are moments between the smiles, and his expression shows great sadness between the smiles.
If you look at his face between the smiles, when he is older, there is sometimes anger in his eyes, and sometimes anger in his voice too. But he smiles on.
The show must go on, whether the clown is happy or not. “Put on your happy face” act happy. The people around you don’t want to see the effects of how they treat you.
We can spank and abuse you, but you have to smile. We might tease you painfully or beat you up, but don’t cry.
We might lead to believe that you are getting, the promotion, the raise, the corner office, but when we admit that these were all lies just to keep you from looking for a better job, don’t you dare look disappointed, you must still act as if you still believe that staying here a long time will lead to success, we expect that of all our employees who haven’t been promoted to high positions.
Optimism is not optional, you will act as if you believe you will be rewarded soon. Signs of discouragement are grounds for firing.
“Happy, happy, happy” is not a description here, it is a commandment. Fake it, because we aren’t going to try to please you.
Never show your fear to people or dogs. Predators sense fear, act brave. Face your fears, walk right up to that bully and tell him what you think of him. (Not).
People pressure us to hide our true emotions, all of them, except happy happy happy, which isn’t optional – ever, but required constantly.
I always felt, maybe even Mork, was a very sad clown, pretending very hard to hide his pain. But maybe it was more. Maybe it was more than hiding a series of discouraged emotions. Maybe the dementors (your black dog) were sucking happiness out of him. Didn’t he call them his “demons”?
Maybe when there is a cure for depression, the drug makers can name the drugs something like “expecto patronus” and “expelliamis!” Because depression personified seems to be a pack of dementors.
Hi Rachel,
You are probably right. I do often look at the world thru dog colored glasses.
But sometimes my dog colored glasses need to be more dog colored, not less.
For example, people pretend that it is natural for some breeds to have no tail or a tail curled over their backs. I remember someone who bought a puppy and had it shipped to them.
The breed was one which was shown with the tail over their back, but this puppy’s tail didn’t do that, so somebody had broken the puppy’s tail, and misaligned it, setting the tail bones wrong on purpose, just to make the puppy’s tail lay limply on its back.
At least 40 years of people telling these breeders and dog show people that this is cruel hasn’t changed things at all.
And most curly tailed show breeds are bred to have kinkier tails than ever before.
Pedigreedogsexposed has shown how breeding dogs to get kinky bent tails can get puppies where, not just the tail vertebrae are off, but some vertebrae in the back too, and over-tight muscles in the back also.
But have the dog breed clubs shown any hint of wanting to stop the suffering? How about the show clubs? Any little hint that they favor healthy backs over a kinky tail?
What changes have been made to the breed standards to relieve the dogs of this pain?
Something is wrong here! People who are shown ex-ray proof of the pain they are causing the animals they claim to love, should be horrified and want to change their dog breeding to get puppies who don’t suffer.
But that’s not what is happening. What we are hearing is usually complete refusal. Some of the French Bulldog people do seem to care about how breeding for unnatural tails causes painful backs. But mostly, the dog show breeders don’t seem to care. They just got to have dogs with bent tight tails.
It seems crazy. To breed dogs to suffer to get a dog with an unnatural tail, it seems crazy.
I tried explains how dogs need their tail to communicate with other dogs, and how we need to be able to read a dog’s emotional state, and to be able to do that, the dogs must have a tail, and the tail must be capable of a range of emotional expressions.
People were interested in learning about the emotion in dog tails. But these weren’t the people breeding dogs with a fixed tail expression.
Chris, over on border-wars (border collies), has very excellent posts on dogs without an anus. Breeding for dogs with a bob tail can delete more than just the tail, but effect the whole rear of the dog.
There is a good post on Manx kittens that mature to have no bowel control, so they can just be walking around the house, or sitting on your lap, and the poop comes out and the cat doesn’t even realize that it has passed the poop, because the gene that deletes the tail sometimes deletes the nerves to the anus as well. I think the post is over on darlingyouaredoingitwrong.blogspot, but I’m not sure.
Yet there are people who take their Manx cat to the vet and pay him to kill it, because of the pooping problem, and then they keep going out and getting another tailless cat.
It seems crazy to me.
But then one day, I was talking to a man about a short haired breed of dog, and I said that I would like them better if their tail covered their anus.
He immediately said that was what he liked about his breed. The way the anus was exposed! He said it was the cutest part of the dog and he loved looking at it.
My stomach rolled. I though about other people, everything fell into place. He was not alone. Lots of other people feel just like him, they like looking at dog anuses.
I’m glad he explained it. (Thank you if you are reading this) but, stomach roll, sorry but “yuck!” I just can’t agree. Sorry.
I talked to people, but one has to tip toe around such a question. I am convinced, there are people who buy and who breed dogs with the intent of getting dogs with an exposed anus. Even if it causes those dogs to have back problems.
IMO, this is a stumbling block to progress in breeding happier healthier dogs. The dogs want to be healthier and happier, but for some reason, some breeders just won’t change and won’t say why.
There is some reason that all the evidence about suffering in brachycephalic breeds is meeting human resistance, and Robins death might be a clue.
There are only three TV personalities who could consistently make laugh out loud: Red Skelton, Jonathan Winters and Robin Williams. All three had a gift, all three were conflicted personalities. Genius usually comes with a price tag.