Once I took a taxi to a veterinarian with my dog. My dogs cough
attracted the attention of the taxi driver. He turned and asked,
"Has your dog caught the flu?" "Yeah! He has been coughing since
last night," I replied. With a long sigh, he said, "Gee, the way it
coughs sounds just like a human being." As the conversation
continued, he told me of a painful experience he had in raising a
dog.
Several years prior, he had a huge German shepherd. It ate a LOT
and its fierce barking bothered the neighbors. Soon, he could no
longer afford to keep the dog. So he put it in a bag and drove it
to a mountain, over 100-km away, abandoning it there. The dog ran
after his car for several kilometers and then dropped out of
sight.
A week later, at midnight, he heard something knocking heavily at
the front door. It was his German shepherd, looking haggard and
exhausted from an apparent long period of running and searching. He
was surprised but said nothing. He turned, grabbed the same bag,
put the dog in and drove away again. This time, he drove to a
faraway town. On the way, he could hear the dog crying in the bag.
Upon arriving, he opened the bag and saw the bag was filled with
blood that had flowed out of the dogs mouth. Prying the dogs
mouth open, he discovered that its tongue was torn in two. The dog
had bitten its own tongue in half to kill itself.
We both fell silent. From the rearview mirror, I could see the
drivers eyes filled with tears. After a while he said, "Every time
I see a dog, it reminds me of my German shepherd. I know I will be
in pain for the rest of my life. I really do not live up to being a
human being. Dogs are more human than I am."
As I listened to the taxi driver tell his story, a scene entered my
mind: the German shepherd was running tirelessly through the
meadows, the mountains, the fields, the towns and the cities. In
order to find his master, he ran hundreds of miles and suffered a
great deal until finally, he arrived at his masters house. He
never thought that his master would not only refuse to open the
door for him without saying a word of comfort, but would take him
far way to discard him again. What a shock this is to a loyal and
courageous dog!
The taxi driver continued on saying that afterward, he buried the
dog with a grand funeral. In memory of the dog, he went to the
gravesite often. Unfortunately, this did not ease his feelings of
guilt. So he had sworn that he would tell this story to every dog
owner he met, hoping to alleviate his feelings of guilt.
