Faithful, respectful, trusting, loving, the list goes on.
If you have a friend who trusts you and is always faithful and supports you no matter what you do, you have a good friend.
If he also is respectful and defends you against the whole world you would have a unique friend - and you would be lucky indeed.
I have never met a human who could be such a friend but I have met many, many dogs who fill that role.
We must be careful not to treat doggie emotions as the same as human emotions. We love our dogs and I am convinced that what our dog feels for us is "love" but it is not the same emotion. We think of our dog as being one of the family. Fido thinks of us as part of his family.
Fifty-six years ago I was a boy of eleven and my Grandmother, Dad's Mother, lived with us in a caravan away from the house. She was a very private person.
Grandmother was a German refugee and I remember her as as a substantial upstanding woman who scared the heck out of me. Mom was frightened of her too. Everyone was frightened of her.
I can not remember why she scared me. I can not even remember her scolding me but when she gave me an order I kind of guessed that I had better do it or else I'd cop it.
Grandmother had a little dog, Tiny She looked just like a little fox with the same coloring and bushy tail but about the size of a Pomaranian. Tiny was scary too. Whenever I came near she would start yapping. If I tried to ignore her and went too close she would bite me.
At least Grandmother never bit me! But instead of giving me a cuddle to kiss it better like a normal Grandmother she would call Tiny to her lap to console her and scold me for upsetting the poor little thing.
Grandmother loved that dog and there was no doubting that Tiny loved her. The whole family wondered how she had won Tiny's affection because she seemed so cruel to her. She had trained her to do some amazing things. Why when she had a housekeeping job she had even trained her to use a litter box. We had never heard of such a thing!
The railway line passed our property and we often watched the train go by. Grandmother each Friday would walk the mile to the station and go to the city. I was never told why. Tiny was not allowed to go with her to the station so she would plop herself down by our gate to wait for her mistress to return. Tiny would not eat or drink for the whole day and if I tried to comfort her with water or food I was likely to get bitten. It was hard to be her friend.
Whatever took Grandmother to town took varying amounts of time. She went off in the morning and returned sometime between 3pm and 7pm. Poor Tiny would sometimes have a long day in the summer heat or rain.
If you watched, and we didn't always, as a train went by Tiny would lift her head and tear off toward the station. And when Grandmother alighted from the train Tiny was waiting to greet her.
How did she know? I thought it was magic! Grandmother denied signalling to her from the train and there seemed to me to be no reasonable explanation. The years went by unnoticed as they do in childhood and one day Grandmother never came home.
Tiny never saw Grandmother again. Still she stayed at her post never taking her eyes off the road that Grandmother would take. She had complete trust in Grandmother and knew that she would return as she promised every week and her love for my Grandmom would not allow her to do anything else but wait.
It was a terrible time. Tiny kept going back to her post no matter how many times she was taken away. She pined and fretted and wasted away. She had never really mellowed to me although her bites had lost their sting. But I was proud of my scary Grandmom who could stand up to anyone and proud of her little dog who would give her all for her. I guess I loved them both. |
