No pack left behind
I am back to walking outside the house the last couple of days. I join in on the dog-walk sessions both morning and evening that are about 15-20 minutes long. But I am very slow at walking still - both from energy issues and the wounds on my leg impeding me.
Our dog Kobe, like most animals, is very intuitive to sense that something is wrong. While I was out on surgery, he was depressed and would not play or be active. His “spider” senses tell him that something has changed to his “pack”, something that he does not like. On my return from the hospital, he had a remarkable change in behavior and start playing with his toys again and running around the house. He also “guards” me as he instinctively knows that I am injured in some way - perhaps he can smell the wounds, but he is very different.
During the dog walks’, as I am not able to keep up with him, he often pauses and stops and waits for me to catch up. This is less pronounced in the early part of the walk where is busy “smelling the roses” in order to get himself to “do his business”. When we return back to the house, he is now more concerned about my catching up. Every 5 to 10 feet, he stops looks back at me, and then continues to walk again. In rare situations when I am walking ahead of him, he still stops to look backward unaware of the fact that I am ahead not behind.
This is what I call “No pack left behind” - alluding to the pack mentality of dogs who have emanated from the wolf family over a period of 20,000-30,000 years. This line is a pun on the education policy of George W Bush and his “No child left behind act” in the USA during his tenure as President. And unlike pack mentality, these child-centric practices were actually detrimental to education as I will discuss in a future post…
