High Bred For Goodness

dog

I had a dog once, Olivia. She came out of championship ancestors in Brazil.
Her ultimate ancestry came out of Newfoundlands and she was gorgeous looking and acting, a lab.

Her genetically connected ancestors would swim like hell with all of their muster and all that they could expend out to a cruise, merchant ship, wrecks and drag people out to shorelines and risk their own lives in the process while cresting huge waves would almost drown them in the process.

 

She also was smart. If someone came to door, she’d go to the door and ominously growl when the doorbell was rung. She had a strong sense of safety.

If I’d let someone unknown to her into the house, she would gently grab whomever by the sleeve at the arm and lead that person by gently pulling away from where my baby, my little daughter at the time, was located.

She wasn’t aggressive, but just directive. However she would go full force if I would tell her to attack. She also would release the sleeve if I told her to do so.I know that this second part is so from evidence since I asked her to let go a few times from guest clothing at the arms.

I know where her orientation came from. It came from this viewpoint. These are creatures, ones whose genes are in her, that work to crest thirty foot waves to save lives and they keep dragging them one by one until persnally physically spent to shorelines.

I’ve seen this orientation. A whole bunch of geese will fly down when one member of their group falls and will tend it until it does improve or fails in life.

I saw one goose yelling and walking around a squashed goose in Pennsylvania and I had to swerve out of my lane to avoid hitting the screaming one when bringing my daughter back from college to MA.

I saw it another time, too, when doves were trying to rouse a dead one by the side of the road. It happens. Road kill. Squished bird.

We all have to be like that. We have to grab sleeves to gently lead others to new places, fly across the crests of waters and scream like bloody hell when travesties occur.

This dog, Olivia, is dead. So are the others in this story.

We are not dead. So we CAN be like them since we have shared genetics that push us as much as they have been moved. So let’s serve as best as we can!

The fact is that lots of people taught me much about life. I was writing, for example, psalms when I was eight. I was writing symphonies when I was ten using an organ that my parents gave me along with note books for musical script.

I’ll tell you ,though, the three most important messages that I got from the conglomerate of them all. it goes like this:

Take care of yourself, serve humanity and serve the natural world.

When I lived in NYC as a financially poor student, I’d bring sandwiches and hot tea to homeless people sitting on the sidewalk. If I’d run out of extra money to serve them, I would simply introduce myself and sit down besides them for a while to show sympathy and caring. We’d either talk or not during time together.

It is very Quakerly. You sit in silence and if someone has something to say that is salient, you do it. Then you end your meeting.

If you can pounce on the problem, you take it onto yourself. There is no other way forward.

My Quakerly meeting won’t ever end. I will always be open to serving. How about other people? Can we better be like Olivia, the dog? How about acting like these hog-like creatures. We can all be like them if we muster the attitude out of the better sides of ourselves! …

Javelinas are hoofed New World animals that look a bit like boars and roam the backyards and wildlands of the Americas as far north as the U.S. Southwest. When Dante de Kort, an Arizona fourth-grader, found a dead one in the woods, he set up a trail camera to capture footage of scavengers for a science fair. But he got far more.

In 100 videos Dante recorded never-before-seen behavior: Herd mates of a dead javelina returned for 10 days to nudge, nuzzle, and try to pick up the body with their snouts. They even lay down to sleep beside it, and Dante saw them chase away coyotes.

After biologist Mariana Altrichter saw Dante’s footage, the two co-authored a paper on javelina mourning for Ethology.

Dante told us: “Most people think javelinas are stinky animals that nobody needs around, but when you look at them more closely, you notice they actually care for each other and come back for their dead.”

Personally, I need all people to be rescuers the way that dogs, hogs, geese and doves are.Who else is up to the task?

Sally Dugman is a writer from MA, USA.

 

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