A dog's life

As I returned home from another day in the office, the lone stray dog which lives in front of my house, was wagging its tail as usual.

I keep a few biscuits in the car for that dog which I feed it after I park the car. Naturally, the dog gets excited every time its sees my car approaching. I personally find it quite amazing that the dog is able to recognize my car from quite a distance.

As I gave the usual quota of 4 biscuits to the dog, I found that the dog had hurt its leg badly. It was limping on three feet.

Yet, until I saw closely, I could not make out the difference. The dog's behaviour hardly changed that day, even though one leg seems to be lifted off the ground due to injury.

I cant think of many humans including myself not changing our behaviour when one of our vital organs is not functioning properly. We would probably take some action to get the problem rectified. We would tell everyone we meet the next day on the hardships faced by us because of this ailment and expect back sympathy or atleast kind words from others.

Coming to think of it, there is lot much we can learn from dogs, atleast the non-biting ones!!!They never seem to lose enthusiasm, always wagging their tail at every opportunity. Even if you hit them, they come back wagging their tail. And for a stray dog, not knowing where your next meal will come from is not likely to be a very comforting experience.

I wonder why so many then, so many idioms and colloquial phrases in various languages portray dogs in a poor light. People we don't like are often referred to as dogs. Maybe it is because of the few odd dogs which have the tendency to bite.

Coming to think of it, it can be argued that a dog is never born 'wild' (i.e. the type that keeps barking at humans and bites on occasions). It is probably the circumstances in which they are born or some incidents in their life that makes them that way.

Given this situation, maybe the humble dog deserves better. Atleast the one near my house does. Lets see if I can do something about it...