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Tomorrow I pick up Zoe the Rescued Dog from her foster parents' home. She is a bichon frise that lived with a couple who were in love. Then they were not in love anymore. Zoe, now 4, was basically emotionally abandoned for over a year. She has been crated about 12 hrs a day. She has no toys. She now will have me, my home and as much joy and peace and she wants and needs. And of course, as usual, I found a spiritual lesson here. Or, like a gift from G-d, it found me.
As I have been scanning the ads on Petfinder.com and on Freecycle.org I have been stricken by how much they sound like an honest personal ad -- "Has had a difficult life"...."Was shy, but blossoms when loved"..."Frightened of men, but open to men who treat her with kindness"... "Amazingly loving given the abuse in her life"... "Determined to get her way, even if it isn't good for her"..."Overly protective of what is hers"....
And it hit me.
We all have our own inner rescue dog. Inside all of us is a pup, for some of us a very tiny pup -- for others a snarling cur, but everyone needs to get a rescue gesture for some old wound. None of us get off Scot free. We are our very own rescue dogs. Listen to unkind words for a moment and imagine them as a growl, a snarl. Hear the cries of loneliness and the sound of a whimper -- they are not so different. The nature of creaturliness is a common one. Loss is universal.
I look at the dogs who need homes, these warm and loving creatures, and my heart breaks. If they are not saved in time, at many 'shelters' they are killed. There are just too many, and the weight of their need is so overwhelming. We gather up all this deep need, this soulfulness, this potential for love, and we "put it to sleep".
In some ways I think we dispose of these animals because they bring up our own feelings of loss and alienation. Put it t sleep where it will be "better off". If pain is out of sight, we can perhaps pretend it is out of mind. But it is still there, reminding us in the sad eyes of dog after dog, in the hopeful look, the tentative wag.
So many of these dogs are abused, hurt, tortured. Some people can only quiet their own inner need for rescue by savaging it in another creature. There is research that indicates a relationship between pet abuse and later violence toward people. And there is now a site that tracks pet abuse cases called Pet-abuse.com".
Dogs are being tortured daily -- there are stories that are almost too painful to tell -- (brace yourselves or stop reading this paragraph and move to the next) -- puppies baked alive, a 16 week old dying dog found in a dumpster with its mouth and nose and ears super-glued shut and its legs broken, abused dog dragged behind a car with its legs tied together on a tow rope.... The St Francis Animal Sanctuary site has graphic pictures and descriptions that will shock you, and leave you in tears.
We are a country that tortures prisoners. This should have come as no surprise given what we tolerate in behavior toward animals. We look the other way for so much.
Yet inside us all is that abandoned one, or perhaps the hurt one, the lonely one, the damaged one, the abused one, the disappointed one, the timid one. Inside all of us is a need for a little loving rescue, the consolation of affectionate touch, the feeling that we are not alone.
We need to be about the business of rescue -- even more than the business of peace. Rescue is at the heart of peace. Seeing the hurt in another -- and doing something about it. Letting someone see our hurt, and accepting a rescue. I am bot talking about the old fairy-tale damsel/prince rescue nonsense. I am talking about something deeper. more universal, something that transcends gender and station in life.
From dictionary.com
To free or deliver from confinement, violence, danger or evil.
[Origin: 1300–50; (v.) ME rescuen < OF rescourre, equiv. to re- re- + escourre to shake, drive out, remove < L excutere (ex- ex-1 + -cutere, comb. form of quatere to shake); (n.) ME, deriv. of the v.]
—Synonyms 1. liberate, release, save, redeem, ransom,
