Learning from Dogs

Back to the beginning.

The grey smoke from the fire drifted up into the still air of the night sky.  It had been a good day for them. Their small community out here in the wild lands. Eight of them had been foraging since the sky had first become light. They had found nuts and plants and fruit aplenty, perhaps sufficient to provide food through one more darkness, maybe two.

Jogod and Omo sat together with their loving animals.  Those two tiny, helpless, shivering, baby wolves that Jogod and Omo had rescued so many moons ago.  Now grown to such beautiful animals and now so much a part of their tribe that Jogod and Omo could not imagine ever being without them.  The wolves were not outsiders.  They were part of the community, even to having names like all the others members of the tribe.  The young female wolf had been called Palo and the young male had been called Toto. So quickly did they come to know their names. So quickly they came to speak with Jogod and Omo in their strange voices. So quickly that Jogod and Omo came to understand those voices; know what so many of those sounds meant.

The fire at the start of darkness was another part of the way they all lived.  For it offered some warmth before the long night. It made the animals that would want to harm them stay away. Now with the fire burning and having Palo and Toto sleeping in the entrance of their cave, they could sleep so more deeply than ever before. Palo and Toto had become their ears and eyes.  They knew when danger was coming close.  They knew how to wake the sleepers in the cave so that they would make noises and shouts to make the creatures that would harm them go away.

Having fire to keep them warm and safe had been long part of their lives. But this very day their fire had given them something very different. It had given them new food. Good new food.

Jogod, with Gadger and Kudu, and with Palo and Toto, had been deep in the land of tall trees when they saw an animal that they had seen before at times. An animal with a head on a long, slender neck, a body covered in brown hair with rows of white dots, a body on long, slim legs.  It was eating the leaves of a tree, did not hear them until, too late, it tried to run as Palo and Toto lunged at it.  Palo and Toto grabbed the animal, held on to its back legs.  It could not run. Kudu came up and threw his arms around the slender neck. Gadger brought down his wooden club hard between the soft ears of the creature. It became still and fell to the ground.

Jogod had carried the dead animal across his shoulders back to the cave. They had lit their evening fire as they always did.  But in this new darkness they also had sticks in the fire, each stick had some of the meat of the animal in the heat of the flames. They had tasted and then eaten some of the hot meat of the animal and it was good.  This hot animal meat seemed to comfort them in a way unlike the fruit and the nuts.

Jogod held a stone with a sharp edge and cut meat from the animal for Palo and Toto.  Palo and Toto knew that what they had found for these animals who walked on two legs was good. Good for all.  Palo and Toto knew they could find other animals like the one they had found today.

After they had all eaten, it was time to sleep in the cave.

Jogod felt good.  He rested down and put his arm around Omo. They slept.

Then Toto came to lay with Jogod and rest beside him, and then he slept. Then Palo came to lay with Omo and rest beside her, and then she slept.

Such was the moment of these happenings. This moment when the trust between man and wolf became the power of faith of each in the other. The faith that they would forever be joined. The destiny for wolf and man for the rest of time.

718 words. Copyright © 2013 Paul Handover