November 27, 2007

Courage and Your Dog

The other day, I got an e-mail recommending a book called “Canine Courage”. Being a dog person usually gets you into dog people company, and its not just owning dogs but anything about dogs. More intrigued than convinced, I sampled a few pages from Tiffin's (author) book and found myself laughing and welling up to several entries that just got you in the gut.

The book to me is a collection of remakable and amazing feats of selfless-ness done by pet dogs. The oldest account of dog heroism was in Roman times with Hyrcanus the dog. This dog never left his master's side even in death (he offended the Emperor). This dog took the meat soldiers used as bait for him so he'd leave the body. But he'd be fast in bringing it to his master and try and feed it to the corpse. As with all dead offenders Hyrcanus' master was thrown in the Tiber River. My heart ahed when I read that the dog dove in and tried to keep its maters body afloat…eventually I assume, the dog Hyrcanus dies doing his master service.

A dog's faithfulness and loyalty is the same before as it is now. In my mind, its the pet owners who have changed. A pet dog who makes up its mind that you are its master will die for you. Yet if you fail to make that mark on your pet dog with abuse or neglect it is propably not meant to give you its gift.
Reminds me of the saying about the dog biting the hand that feeds it, I'd like to think the owner being incapable and not worthy of the dogs' life.
Canine Courage is more of a collage of dog heroes that have been an example of love, loyalty, bravery and courage which says a lot of what we are missing because of all the concerns we have in life..

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