Thanks to Bruno, I am kicking a couple of potential column ideas down the road so we can discuss dogs this week, dear diary.
As we noted here a few weeks ago, I defied you to look a dog in the eye and not feel some kind of connection to a world of inherent understanding.
Dogs know something about us that we don’t know about ourselves. They get to expose truths in us, whether we like it or not.
Look a dog in the eye … not at meal time, or when you have a hamburger in your hand, because that’s not fair to dog or person. The rules change when food is involved.
Because of their huge sense of smell and sensitivities to their environment, dogs have made themselves pretty important partners.
So when the details surrounding Bruno’s survival gained so much traction, internationally now, it raised no sense of surprise to those of us who have had the privilege of growing up with and being partnered with dogs throughout our lives.
You want a lesson in perseverance?
Well, Bruno delivered that one in spades.
Courage?
Yep.
His canine buddies displayed a pure sense of devotion once they discovered where he was, as did his owners, the Billesbergers.
What’s not to like about this story, other than the near gruesome start of the recovery process?
As a kidlet, I too experienced a “lost and found” incident with a terrific coonhound named Mac who spent 12 days in the middle of winter, ensnared on a barbed-wire fence. He was rescued by a First Nations hunter out checking his lines for coyotes and was returned to our doorstep 20 miles away.
He was our family’s miracle pooch and don’t think this 11-year-old kid, at the time, didn’t expend more than a few tears when I found him lying on our kitchen floor when I got home from school on the day he was found and returned. Emaciated, but intact, other than for the scars left over from his struggle with the fence.
So when Bruno’s story came to my doorstep, my first thoughts swung over to the week I spent wondering what happened to “my dog” and, if he had decided to wander away, why I hadn’t been able to bid him a proper farewell, because he had been a loyal friend.
Well, he hadn’t wandered or been dognapped. Loyalty was not to be questioned.
Bruno hadn’t either.
Dogs, cats, horses get to be victims of circumstance just like kids and adults do.
What happens to these victims makes the story, when those traits such as perseverance, courage and basic instincts kick in, compelling.
We hear remarkable accounts of young people surviving war, hunger, fires and becoming stronger human beings as a result.
We hear stories like those we found in our Canadian heroes like Terry Fox and Rick Hanson and prisoners of war, and marvel at their sense of perseverance and courage.
We swing over to stories from our animal kingdoms and their remarkable abilities to survive insurmountable odds and we applaud, whether they win or lose the battle.
So, yes, pets do teach us a lot of things about empathy, loyalty, forgiveness and a whole lot about sensitivity that some of us need now and then.
Let’s face it folks, when it comes down to basic life lessons, dogs know what to do. It’s the rest of us that have to be trained.
Thanks Bruno.
Lesson delivered.
I expect we all learned a little something from your ordeal.
