Heroes Don't Hesitate

I rescued a dog today. I was walking home from school and I saw my neighbour and two of his friends checking the tags on the collar of a small dog. Without stopping I asked them, "Is that a lost dog?" and they said "Yeah." I suggested that they should take a picture of the dog with their phone incase it might help to find the owner. They didn't reply. I overheard one of them say there was no address on the tags. Assuming that the dog could find his own way home, he let go of the dog. It ran past me and started sniffing every tree it could find. Judging by the dog's behaviour I felt kinda worried. I asked them if one of them would take the dog home with them to be safe. One of them said they might be able to so I picked up the dog and handed it to him. It cried out in pain after I put him in the boy's arms. Clearly this guy didn't know how to properly hold him so he set him back down on the ground to move about freely.

When I got to the entrance of my neighbourhood I realized everyone had lost interest in the poor thing and had gone their seperate ways leaving it alone. I also noticed the dog was making his way to the highway.

It's moments like this that remind me of one particular story in the Bible. There were a pair of thieves that had just robbed a man and left him bleeding out in the desert. Two people happen to encounter the man but only one actually tries to help him. The other, being a wealthy noble, turns a blind eye to the injured man and goes about his business. When moments like this in real life occur, I choose not to be wealthy noble in the story.

So I chased after the dog, scooped him up and brought him home with me. I called the phone number on his collar and was redirected to the owner. It turns out the owner lives just across the street.

Once again, I scooped up Konan (that was his name) and walked down to the owner's street. I saw her coming down the street with her three kids at her side. Seeing the joyful expressions on their faces really made my day. I also learned that Konan was thirteen years old and deaf in both ears. On top of that, at his age he was also bordering on becoming senile. Considering all this, it's a good thing I picked him up when I did.

About an hour later, my neighbour and his friend come up to my door step asking if I seen that lost dog anywhere. The look on my neighbour's face just completely flushed away once I told him I had already returned the dog to his owner. I think he was hoping that HE would be seen as the hero.