A good friend of mine came home and found the front door standing open. Before checking to see if valuables had been lifted by crack heads, he noticed his beloved dog was missing. He checked the house and yard, and then expanded his search to the neighborhood. In a near panic, he told me he threw up a couple of quick prayers that the Almighty would drop what He was doing and aid in the search for the lawst dawg.
My friend’s dog had indeed gotten out, but he hadn’t gone far. He was merely partying with his peeps in the neighbor’s yard. He couldn't figure out how to get back to his own yard.
Dogs don’t often ponder these matters before setting them in motion. “Now, if I seize this opportunity to run away, I’m going to get to sniff and look around and hike my leg and generally gomm around until my daddy (or mommy) finds me.” With dogs the thought process ends there. There is no thought about getting back into the yard, much less the house. No worries about food, water, shelter, or getting in trouble. Just ask my Jack Russell Terrier, Micky. She’ll disobey me and not care, because she’d rather do what she is doing – sniffing new stuff - even if she knows I will taser her when I catch her.
(Cats don’t bother pondering anything that involves their people. Cats hate us, and wish we’d die, provided there is a cat food tree nearby.)
My friend wondered if it was goofy to interrupt God with a Dog Prayer. I guess not, because God stepped in and helped, didn’t He? Would the dog have been found had my friend not tapped God on the shoulder and asked for help? Probably not, but who can say. I know many people have been touched by the story, and maybe it will cause them to pray for help in time of need. It can't hurt, especially if one finds himself in a foxhole.
I’ve had similar experiences. Usually when my dogs get out, I’d neglected to put the collar back on the dog after a bath. There aren’t many situations more helpless than when a dog runs away, and he has no I.D. People who are that negligent should be stabbed.
Deaf and blind Virgil got out last summer when the moron lawn guys didn’t latch the gate. I didn’t know how to write “please close the effing gate (for the 700th time)” in Spanish, so they left it wide open. The hapless Virgil stumbled outside and down the street. Lost.
His moron daddy hadn’t put his collar back on because it irritated his emaciated neck, and because his daddy assumed Virgil was too old and blind to WANT to get out and party. Wrong. Virgil is wont to wander. He can no longer find his way back to the pet door. He could and has ended up over by Del City. Virgil has always been a Northside Dog. He usually tells people he lives in Heritage Hills, rather than ghetto Gatewood.
Can you imagine what it must be like to be blind and deaf, and then wander outside your yard? It would suck. After I called the lawn people and chewed them out, yet again, I began searching for Virgil, all the while believing it to be a hopeless cause. Yet I threw up my own private dog prayer. One of the lodgers helped me look, and he approached some neighborhood kids. Had they seen a dog that looked like he belonged in a Tim Burton movie, or had pulled the sleigh for the Grinch who stole Christmas? Amazingly, and this is where God must have stepped in, the kids reported they saw Virgil wandering around bumping into things. They noted he could not hear, and they called the Nazis at animal control to come get him. The kids meant well, but they are now with Michael Jackson. Just sayin'.
The poor thing was hauled off to the Dogcentration Camp, where he was slated to be gassed if not claimed. I rushed down to get him, and all was well, other than he smelled like common street dogs, and he’d picked up African Killer Fleas. I was still annoyed with the lawn people. However, I was much more focused on the virtual miracle of finding my pitiful dog under these circumstances. Odds are he should have been assassinated by someone in a car. But he wasn’t.
Why? I think God likes dogs. He
loves us, so he invented dogs for us to enjoy. He likes to help us get them back.
I’ve had lost dogs and sick dogs. Yet they have been found, or they have lived. Each time I had the sense (and enough fear) to ask for Divine Intervention, and each time it worked. Will it always? Probably not. We don't always get what we want, because God isn't Santa Claus.
Now why would God be so quick to help with a lost or sick dog, but not give me an A on an exam in law school when I asked Him? Why doesn’t God always save our job that is in peril? Why don’t people who have cancer get well, even when super righteous people are sending up People Prayers?
I have no idea, and I’m not the first person to ponder this. Maybe when God helps us with our Dog Problems, it is less likely to interfere with the major plans He has for us. We love our dogs, but if something happens, and God steps in to fix it, it doesn’t effect that much, does it? We're going to get over it either way. Well, I suppose if we are nutty and goofy enough to run amok over a dog, then we might get nekkid and rub feces on ourselves or something. But I digress.
It has been my experience that God answers all prayers, but not necessarily the way we want, or when we want. He doesn’t have to because He is GOD, I suppose, and he is Big. Besides, He knows what we need, as well as what we want – before we ask. He gives us a lot of what we want (but don’t even need). If we ask him for something, and it doesn’t happen the way we want, our prayers help us adapt to the reality. Unless we choose to pout. Or, oftentimes we receive something even better than what we’d been begging for in the first place. I like it when that happens.
When Lyn was close to death with that awful sucky cancer, I shared with him that I was beginning to question the whole concept of prayer. Lyn shared with me that God Almighty didn’t really need my approval anyway, and that His Plan would prevail, and that it would be best. The reason we pray is to help us become a part of God’s Plan – whether we like the plan or not. In time everything is revealed to us. If not, I suppose we can ask someone in Heaven. No, God didn't cure Lyn, as we'd prayed and hoped, but He gave him more time than expected. When his time came, he was at peace, and as far as I know he was unafraid. What God did in this case was help all of us celebrate his life. God infused our minds with wonderful memories of a terrific guy. We moved on. We still miss him. God helped us cope. As always. It sucks to die, but when one can have a cigar in the end, it is a little easier to handle.
C.S. Lewis said and wrote a bunch of cool stuff. One of my favorite quotes is this one:
"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless; I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God; it changes me."
A friend of mine was asked, "why do you pray on your knees?" he answered, "because God likes it."
These cheesy dog stories make me feel all warm and fuzzy, but I am still mildly annoyed over some of my grades in law school. I prayed and I studied, and the grades sucked. Yet I passed the bar exam, which was much more difficult. So much more was at stake then too.
Why’d I pass the bar exam? How?
My dogs were praying for me.
© Randall P. Hodge, Esq., and Morningwood Enterprises, Ltd.
