I have had dogs for my entire life. My father loved dogs, my mother not so much. We took them with us everywhere we went growing up, so much so that slobber on the windows of our cars was how I thought all cars should be.
As a young boy we had a Shepard mix named Henry. Henry was loyal to the core. When I started going to school in rural upstate New York, Henry’s job was to walk with me the quarter mile down our old road to the bus stop. The road the bus came on was not too busy, and I had been taught to stay back until the bus pulled up. One day while in first grade, while waiting for the bus at the end of the road, I was distracted by two squirrels playing in the trees and I managed to step out a bit into the road. Henry was barking. I thought at the squirrels. I would later learn he was barking at me. He was warning me to get back because he could tell there was a car coming. I wasn’t listening. So he did the only thing he knew how, he pushed me with his body. He saved my life. Unfortunately, the car hit him and he died almost instantly. The driver stopped in shock. He had not seen either me or my dog. He put Henry gently in the trunk and drove me and my dog back up the road to our house. It was one of the most traumatic moments of my life. And I remember it to this day. It may very be why I have dogs today, even though they require so much care. I realized then, that they have a vocation in our lives, and in mine, Henry’s was to protect my life with his.
Domestic animals have long served us and we have not always been kind in return. Whether through breeding or the Creator’s design, animals have a job to do. To feed us, cloth us, guard us or provide loving companionship. It is now well proven that having a pet in your life helps you heal faster and live longer. Many hospitals including our local hospitals here bring animals into patient’s rooms to help with healing. If you go down to the Torrance Memorial Hospital and walk in to the entrance hall from the parking structure you will see portraits of dogs. Those are hospital service dogs; all of them still visiting each week to help us humans know love.
I have tried to live my life by the simple mantra to “be the person your dog thinks you are”. I am not sure I can say that of cats; more likely “be the servant I expect you to be”.
None of what we call civilization would be possible without animals. Long before fossil fuels, animals did the plowing, the pulling, the feeding, the riding, the daily chores of a million, million human souls. Wild animals provide the very ecosystem w which sustains us; from the food chain to the scavengers who create room for more life.
And in return? We have not done well by our cousins. Not well at all. For here is the shifting ground we should consider: It’s not what job animals can do for us but our relationship with animals that matter. After all we ARE animals as well. “The hubris that we are above other animals, denies our own nature” says Kimberly French; from our sexuality to our emotions. "We are more conscious perhaps (after all we are the only animals that is anxious about being alive) but we have a job to do with animals as much as animals do jobs for us. We really aren’t so different." (Kimberly French “Our Animal Contradictions” UU World, Fall 2013)
Blessings be to all animals who we join in the work of the world.
With Grace and Grit, John
