Hound dog

As a young lawyer I used to travel to an island to attend court hearings. My employer had mining operations there. The place was a backwater, and the roads had holes so huge someone suggested that we should just turn the other side up. Understandably, most of those who journeyed from the mine site to the provincial center went by sea, but I chose to travel by land, for two reasons—the wild beauty of the countryside and a mendicant dog.

Bumpy though the ride was, the scenery offered an abundance of thrills for the desk-bound urbanite. The terrain was uneven, which made surprises of the sights along the way.  A hill might yield to a stretch of pasture with grazing cows, and lead to a bush that seemed afire with colors. And then to a plain of flowers, lavish five-petalled stars carpeting the ground with constellations of yellows, reds and whites. I could see wagtails, herons, fruit doves and swiftlets all throughout, and quail now and then suddenly soaring.

What of the dog?  At a certain point, the road from the capital forked. One prong went to the coastal towns, the other to the middle of the island, thence to the mine site. At the crossroads the passenger jeepney made a stopover. The people climbed down from the roof and sides (for some reason—the air and view perhaps, certainly not safety—these were the areas of the vehicle that got filled up first), and joined those who had left their places inside to stretch their legs, or line up before the makeshift toilet at the back or, if they could not wait, go unaccompanied somewhere else. But most of the passengers would seat themselves inside a restaurant and order food.

There the dog waited. As soon as the food was served and the people were tucking in, the animal approached each one and asked for a morsel, a piece of chicken  or a slice of pork, or just the bone, whatever of the meat was left. In most other places, the dog would get a penalty kick. But not here, this was an unusual dog. It sat on its haunches and extended a foreleg, as though to beg, and if ignored, gently touched the passenger’s arm with its paw, and continued to nudge him until it was given food. I smiled when it happened to me and looked at the dog’s eyes. When they blinked, I pitched the leg bone of a chicken into the dog’s mouth, which caught it without a sound.

I remember this dog when I read Matthew’s account of the Chanaanite woman, who kept following Jesus and his disciples, crying, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.”

At first Jesus did not mind her, but soon the disciples urged him to send her away because she kept calling after them. Jesus said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

But the woman came up and, doing Jesus homage, said, “Lord, help me.” Jesus told her, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” The woman said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”

Jesus was moved and said, “O woman, great is your faith!

Let it be done for you as you wish.” And at that exact moment the woman’s daughter was healed.

The dogs the woman was talking about were dogs that merely waited for the scraps to fall from the table of their masters, to which they then helped themselves.  But the dog in the restaurant at the crossroads did not allow for time lags. It made the rounds of the tables, unabashedly asking the diners for a morsel. Did its owner train it to do what it did, or did it just learn this from need in true Darwinian fashion?

While the lesson in Matthew’s account has to do with persistence and humility in prayer, the mention of dogs, which are evoked by their counterpart at the intersection, transports me to Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven.” The poem compares God to a hound that relentlessly pursues the sinner, to offer him love and salvation. Thinking of it now, I find that the gentle touch of the dog’s paw on my arm somehow suggests these lines from the poem:

Is my gloom, after all,

Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?