Tribute to a Brown Dog (written by Granddaddy)
Life is short. For a dog it's shorter. For some dogs even shorter than that.
What is life for? Why were we created? Why was anything created? Is there a purpose?
Is a long life important? Is a short life with more impact better than a long life with no impact?
Why do we morn or cry? Is it because we miss something ourselves or feel sorry that whose life ended too early or unexpected?
Nobody knows where Brown Dog came from. He showed up here at the farm two years ago this week, the last week in March. I should say " showed up" rather than found because he was hard to see. He apparently had been chased, trapped, beaten, shot at or all of these because he would sneak around everywhere he went. He was terrified of a gun, a stick, or anything that looked like a rope. Brown Dog was either a runaway or a drop. He had been seen earlier at the wood yard by my neighbor Remus, scrounging for food and apparently found a little better picking from the leftovers of the workers building Laura and Anna's houses. I first saw him sneaking behind the shed. When I tried to walk around to get a better look, he had disappeared. I don't know if it was from what he learned avoiding the dog catcher but I do know Brown Dog was stealthy. His brown coat blended in with the ground and he moved with such ease and slowness at times, he could have been a deer. Second time I saw him, he was creeping down the hill from Laura's house toward the branch because the carpenters had arrived for work and he had left his new found sleeping quarters in the crawl space under the new house. He lied down a few hundred feet away, essentially hidden and watched the entire day, I think, waiting till everyone had left, hoping to find some leftover lunch scraps I put out some dog food on a board that evening near the crawl space door and it disappeared. I continued to put out a little food every day and it too disappeared. After several days of this I noticed wherever I went, Brown Dog would be lurking nearby in the shadows. I would put out food in a bowl at the main house and Brown Dog would watch me. He would not come up. But when I went inside he would come eat the food, unless it was in an enclosed area. That being the case, he would pick up the bowl and food with his teeth and move to an open area where he could see in every direction. I wondered how many times someone had tried to trap him. Brown Dog was very wary. He was also very scared. Ella and I watched him lying in the yard sleeping and every few minutes he would jerk and wake up and look around. I don't know if it was the coyotes he had encountered but in the evening just before dark he would seem to come closer than normal but never getting close enough to touch. At that time he would constantly look around, gazing at the distant woods or fields as if there was something there that I couldn't see. I wondered how many dark nights he had spent terrorized, all alone. He walked with a limp from some unknown injury to his front shoulder. Within a short time, I don't know how long, Brown Dog would sleep on the porch where ever I was staying. He would run when I went to the door. He never did understand I was not going to beat him or kick or scold him. About the same time Brown Dog started following Remus Simmons and me to the area where we were building the pond. He would lay on a fresh dirt pile while Remus was driving the 40 ton Liebherr loader and I was driving the Bobcat skidsteer or dump truck or compactor. Apparently the roar of the engines and vibration of the ground allieved his fears and he would go to sleep. He would sleep so soundly that I thought maybe he was sick or had heartworms or something. He wasn't nervous or jumpy if the machines were running. He would lay on a pile of dirt and watch Remus or I coming towards him but he would not move until we were almost on top of him. He wasn't afraid of a big machine. When we moved from site to site, he would trot along in front of the bucket if I was driving the Bobcat or in front of the fender if I was driving a truck. He would stay so close in front of the truck that I couldn't see him. It was dangerous. I wondered why he did this. It was like he wanted to be close but not be seen. Twice I hit him with the skidsteer bucket not knowing he was there but it was not his time. He escaped without serious injury. He would look at me as if I meant to hurt him not understanding that he should not be that close to construction equipment and we could not see him when we were backing up or turning. When it got hot in the middle of that summer Brown Dog would go jump in the branch or pond and swim around a little, then go crawl under some large boulders piled up in such a way that there was a cool cave underneath and stay during the hot part of the day. The coolness of his hideout was due to the rocks being so massive that they retained the coolness of the night before. At quitting time he would follow us back to the house. If we were working on equipment or had a breakdown, he would lay a few feet away and watch but if approached, he would run. In the summer he would hide in the weeds behind one of the houses. I realized he could watch me but I could barely see him. He was terrified of other dogs and would run all the way across the highway without stopping if a neighbors dog came up. One day when there was no place to run, I saw him crawl under the dump truck and put his head between the back tires. He reminded me of an ostrich. His head and eyes were hidden but the rest of his body was exposed. Brown Dog was afraid of everything except construction equipment and he would not let anyone touch him. But after several months he started following Remus and I closer and closer when we were walking and one day he started nudging my hand or Remus's with his snout. If I stopped and turned to touch him, he would shy back and back up if I took a step toward him. He wanted to feel a human touch but he was so afraid.
As all this was happening I could not help but see that God was showing me something. Everyone on the face of the earth wants to be touched and loved. God made us that way. But so often people are hurt in relationships and are afraid to allow anyone to touch them. I personally think God made the human heart to love. God is love and after all, we are made in His image. But sin separated us from God and Adam and Eve and all mankind longs for something, but are afraid, like Brown Dog. We all want to be touched by someone greater than us. It was six months, September 2015, before any human I know, touched Brown Dog. The first was Christine, Remus's grand daughter. For some reason Brown Dog was not afraid of children. He would also let a woman approach him. I believe his abuser was a man.
The first time Brown Dog let me touch him was when I was petting another dog, a puppy three or four months old, that God sent to us, either dropped or lost. We called her Love Joy and she was appropriately named. I named her after the community and road where the farm is located not realizing that here name reflected her character. She was afraid and shaking on my doorstep but she would lie down when approached instead of run away. I would have kept her on the farm but I made the mistake of taking her to Raleigh so my daughters could "get her checked out at the vet" and my five year old grandson, Sawyer, fell in love with her and would cry if anyone mentioned giving her away or taking her back to the farm. She was "his dog". Anna would bring Sawyer and Love Joy to Troy often and the first time she encountered Brown Dog, he was hiding in the weeds behind the house and he took off like a bullet terrified of her when she approached. She was persistent and eventually made friends with him. It didn't hurt that she was a female. When she came to me one day and I was petting her, Brown Dog's fear, perhaps, was overcome by jealousy and he came close enough that I rubbed his head. With time, he would approach without another dog being there but he would seem to shake with fear even though he loved being touched. When Brown Dog let me rub his head, my suspicions of someone abusing him was confirmed. There were knots on his head where he had been beaten. With time I could sit down and Brown Dog would approach me and let me rub him but he was always nervous. There was one place he did not seem so afraid. That was at the steps to the farm house. There was a handicap ramp I built for mama before she died and it worked so well with the grandkids, I never took it down. If I set on the steps, Brown Dog would come up the ramp and let me rub his head and neck and back. There was a rail between us and I think that made him feel safe. In fact, the past few weeks, he would run up the ramp and wait for me when I was near the house. Even if I had put his food out, he would wait for me to pet him rather than going to his food.
The entire time Brown Dog was with us, I could not help but think about man's relationship with God. God is so much greater than man. God is so much more capable than man. God is the provider of all man needs. The God-man relationship is similar in ways to the man-dog relationship. We are so much greater and capable than dogs. We can be the provider for a dog. Just as we are dependent on God, a dog can be dependent on a man. And just like we long for a relationship and touch by God, Brown Dog longed for a relationship and touch by me.
And just as I am saddened by the abuse of Brown Dog, I am saddened by the abuse of well meaning people, including Christian pastors, teachers, and leaders, inadvertently abusing God's children by telling them God is angry at them and wants to punish them. For six months I wanted to touch Brown Dog but he was afraid of me. People want to enter into God's presence but they are afraid like Brown Dog. They have been told God is angry because of sin and they cannot have what they want with God until they "stop sinning". They don't realize how much God wants to touch them. They are no longer condemned to a life of misery, struggling just to survive, rejected and beaten and unloved. They are not told the truth of the cross, the truth that Jesus paid for every sin of the whole world, past present and future, when he gave his life on the cross. The debt of sin has been paid and none of us can be condemned for our sins because of what our Savior did. We are saved by a Savior, not our behavior. Like Brown Dog we shy away from God, not approaching him although he is longing for us to let Him touch us, like I was longing to touch Brown Dog.
This week, my life with Brown Dog ended. On Monday morning I went out a little later than normal because it had been raining. He didn't greet me so I called him but he didn't show up. An hour later when Remus came up and Brown Dog still didn't show I realized something may be wrong. Remus said maybe he was wandering in the woods somewhere. Remus left to go grind some stumps and I went to work on the grapevines. Remus came back a few minutes later and told me he had found Brown Dog. His was lying on the side of the road. He had apparently been hit by a vehicle. I picked Brown Dog up and dug a grave with the Bobcat under the cedar tree on the hill where he liked to lie. He could see much of the whole farm from there.
I don't know why I never could name Brown Dog. Maybe it was because I knew deep down he would only be here a short time. I knew his life was precarious. There were many dangers he faced and over half the time I could not be around to protect him. There were hunters in the woods, some in the hunting club known to shoot dogs. There were coyotes at night. There was traffic on the highway. There were rattlesnakes in the woods and fields. I called him Dirt Dog when he first showed up because he would lie in the dirt. When we were building the dam and he laid on it I would call him dam dog. When we were spreading straw on the newly seeded areas and he would shake the straw bales with us, I called him Straw Dog. Remus called him George. Ella called him Buddy. Both seemed appropriate but I never seemed to call him anything other than Brown Dog.
Why were we created? What is our purpose. Everyone has asked that question. But it's not a hard question.
I knew when Brown Dog came he was sent by God. And God loves me and you so much that His gifts are perfect. I never knew I needed a dog here at the farm because I'm not here all the time. But God did. As Ella said yesterday, Brown Dog made the farm a home. Every time one of us or the children and grandchildren came, Brown Dog would run out, with his tail and whole body wagging, as if to say, "Welcome Back. I missed you". He knew all our vehicles by sound and he knew where everyone's house was on the farm. When he heard someone coming he would be at their house to greet them before they could get out of the car. He loved the grandchildren, especially Addison Flythe. And Andrew. He wasn't afraid of them. A child could pet Brown dog and put both arms around him but an adult male definitely could not.
Monday, about lunch time, I buried Brown Dog after rubbing his head and scratching under his neck one last time. He didn't shake.
Monday evening as I was pruning the grapevines I wanted to look around and see him lying a few feet away but he was never there. I went back to Raleigh Tuesday morning and he wasn't standing there with that sad look watching me go. Then Friday, when I came back to the farm no one ran out to greet me wagging his tail as if to say, "welcome back to my place. It's so good to see you". And tonight when I looked out the front door, he wasn't lying next to the door as he has done for two years.
Someone said, "You'll have to get another dog". I said, "No, it's impossible". You see, Brown Dog was like a wolf. He had learned to survived with no human assistance for God only knows how long. Maybe a year or two. If I was absent from the farm for a week or ten days at times, Brown Dog could survive. Even if Remus had not fed him, which he did, Brown Dog would find food. Rats, a rabbit or squirrel, were just a few of things I know he caught. And he knew how to hide and where to go when it stormed or when the temperature got down to twenty degrees below freezing. Brown Dog knew how to stay out of trouble. He knew to not go around killing neighbors chickens. God had prepared Brown Dog before He ever gave him to us. Any other dog would not survive as long as Brown Dog did under the same circumstances. And it would not be right to put another dog through what Brown Dog went through in order to survive these circumstances. So God gave us a wonderful gift. And now that gift is gone. But I know God wastes nothing so just as there was a purpose in Brown Dog showing up and learning to trust me, I know there is a purpose in his leaving. Sunday night I was thinking about what I would say if I had to write an obituary for Brown Dog. I don't know why I was thinking that and I certainly didn't expect the next morning would be Brown Dog's last. But it was and now I'm doing what I was thinking about.
I believe somebody, maybe everybody, reading this longs to be touched by God. Someone longs to be held by God and comforted but believes that sin or personal behavior is preventing that from being a reality. Let me assure you that on the cross Jesus paid for every one of your sins, past present and future and nothing can separate you from the love of God. Anyone born again can freely enter into the presence of God. And if you want to be born again, just tell God and the Holy Spirit will lead you in exactly what to do because God does not want anyone to not know him. You were created for one purpose- to have a relationship with your Master and Maker.
Brown Dog was, at one time, hated, despised and beaten but because God loved him and me, He sent Brown Dog here and Brown Dog became loved, accepted and special. God says true love overcomes fear. Brown Dog experienced that. You can too. Draw close to God. He will not beat you. He will not condemn you. He remembers your sins no more. Enjoy a life on earth in closeness with God. Just as with Brown Dog, it may not be long. But you can, like Brown Dog, make an impact. Just your presence and faithfulness can really make a wonderful place even better and more enjoyable.
Find a place on the steps beside God. He will comfort you and make you whole if you just give Him the time. True love cast out fear. God is love.
No comments:
Post a Comment