I am a dog person. Sorry, Fred, the household Feline. It is true. I love you, but if my heart belongs to any group of furry mammals it is the Canine’s – with their silly smiles, their wild enthusiasm and their utter unconditional love. How can you not love a dog?

Today my friend Anne, has the terrible task of taking a beloved pet Roly, to the vet to put him down. He was born of a litter of pups with long, spindly legs, a mixture of too many breeds to mention. She still has his mum and two of his sisters. Roly has lived with her mother and has been a friend, guardian and companion to an 82 year old woman who lives alone, has a stainless steel version of independence and is still as smart as a rising Executive in a corporation. It got me thinking about dogs. What do they mean to us symbolically and what do they teach us as human beings?

I am not traditionally religious, I would consider myself spiritual, but not of the church going variety. I believe that we should live our best lives, do no harm, leave a legacy of love and the world a better place. I am somewhat of a Catholic Buddhist hippie. I have always thought that “dog” is “God” backwards, and I believe that in sending dogs to this sometimes loveless, angry, crazy planet, God was trying to create a physical manifestation of unconditional love. No matter what, a dog always love you. Cats to me are humans, they can be arrogant, self centred, sweet, changeable and selfish, but I think they have evolving to do when it comes to unconditional love. They are sometimes scornful and contemptuous of the canine, hissing at and misunderstanding that the dog’s tail wag is friendship. Rather interpreting it as their own version of tail wagging, which is anger. No matter how much our cat, Fred hisses at my own dog, she looks at him with soft, brown eyes and wags her tail gently and with anticipation of a different reaction. Unconditionally she loves that feline. Similarly it would seem to me that a God, whoever, he or she is, does with us humans. Looking at us benevolently when we fail to see what we should be seeing, that life is not meant to be hissed at, that every situation should be approached with love.

So today as my friend has the horrific task of taking unconditional love and saying goodbye to it, I feel for her across the miles. I shed a tear for her and her mum, that their friend and guardian will leave them, never having asked for anything, but having given so much.

Rest well, Roly, you were a good boy.

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Tanya Uncategorized