A dog lesson

The wretched monster

I never have liked dogs. Ever since I was little I liked the idea of having one. But then while I was walking home from somewhere when I was 3 or 4 years old a mean Rottweiler came to the edge of his fenced yard and started snarlingly barking at me. In my mind I just knew he would somehow run through the fence and try to attack me. So what would a 3 or 4 something year old do in a situation like this. Just cry. Cry out of fear. And that was my introduction to dogs. They are merciless creatures bent on biting everything they can hook their teeth on. Even little boys.

Fast forward 18 or 19 years later. My wife all of a sudden had a dog land on her lap and now he is sipping his water bowl at our kitchen as I write this. I'm skeptical at dogs. Is he going to bite everything off? Is he going to pee everywhere, even on my computer while i'm typing? Am I going to fight to the death for my life from this foul wretched beast? He may be small but those are usually the smartest kind...so I'm told. So While my wife embraced him with arms wide open. I tolerated him with arms latched closed like a vault in fort knox with a gun in one hand and a serrated edge on the other. I was ready for him to show his true colors.

After a couple of days the dog seemed to be calm and relaxed. I had my wide eyes on him though. I keep looking to see any moment he will snap to his true nature! But after 3 days of seeing him walk up to me then just lying down beside me. Not a bark, not a bite, just simply lying down I started thinking "Maybe I misjudged you."

I thought for awhile about this. Me judging the dog before I really knew him is like that in the human sense of things aswell. Don't we prejudge things before we actually look at them too. We look at each other thinking we know all about everything and everyone but really we don't know much about anything or anyone until they come directly to our face. We only see part of the puzzle so-to-speak, until we see the whole picture then we only see little pieces. So like this calm dog I severely misjudged so as it is to people we misjudge. Don't judge the whole puzzle until the whole picture is in full view of you. At least that is what I learned from this dog lesson.