How many human beings would protect an abandoned puppy the way dogs in some widely reported incidents have protected similarly discarded human babiesIJ
According to a recent BBC report, Sasha, a four-year old yellow labrador, will posthumously receive the PDSA Dickin Medal, which is the British Army's highest military award for animals, equivalent to the Victoria Cross given to men. Trained to hunt explosives, Sasha, who is credited to have saved the lives of thousands of soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan, was killed, along with her handler, Kenneth Rowe, on July 23, 2008, when their routine patrol was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during an ambush. The citation for Sasha, who, along with her handler, was attached to the second battalion, The Parachute Regiment, reads, “Sasha's determination to search and push forward — despite gruelling conditions and relentless Taliban attacks — was a morale booster to soldiers who entrusted their lives to her weapon-finding capability.” Jan Mcloughlin, director-general of the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals, which gives the award observed, “Her story exemplifies the dedication of man's best friend and reminds us all of the amazing contribution they make to our lives.”
The ties that develop between dogs and their handlers, who face death together, have been the subjects of many deeply moving stories, one of which is by Elisabeth Bumiller in The New York Times of May 11, 2011. An excerpt from it reads,
“The bonds that grow in battle between the labs and their Marine handlers are already the stuff of heart-tugging war stories. But few have had the emotional impact of that of Pfc. Colton W Rusk, a 20-year-old Marine machine gunner and dog handler who was killed in December by sniper fire in Sangin, one of the most deadly areas in Helmand. During his deployment, Private Rusk sent his parents a steady flow of pictures and news about his beloved bomb dog, Eli, a black lab. When Private Rusk was shot, Marine officers told his parents, Eli crawled on top of their son to try to protect him.
The three-year-old Eli, the first name of the survivors listed in Private Rusk's obituary, was retired early from the military and adopted in February by Private Rusk's parents, Darrell and Kathy Rusk. “He's a big comfort to us”, Kathy Rusk said in a telephone interview from her home in Orange Grove, Texas. After the dog's retirement ceremony in February at lackland Air Force Base, an event that generated enormous news coverage in Texas, the Rusks brought Eli for the first time into their home. “The first place he went was Colton's room”, Mrs. Rusk said. “He sniffed around and jumped up on his bed.”
Dogs are instinctively protective and friendly toward human beings. A front-page report by Pinaki Majumdar in the Bengali daily Aajkaal of May 25, 1996, accompanied by a photograph by Tapan Mukherjee, narrates the story of three stray dogs in Kolkata guarding a human baby abandoned near a dustbin throughout the night of May 23 to the morning of May 24 when people took her to a police station. They hung around where the baby was kept and left only around 2pm, when it was taken away to a home. They did not leave even to search for food.
A front-page report in the Bangalore edition of the New Indian Express of March 10, 2007, tells how another set of three dogs, ignoring dangers to themselves, protected throughout the night from wild animals, a new-born baby abandoned by its unwed mother at the Devarayanadurga reserve forest. They trooped back with her only after, attracted by their barking, a man brought her back to a village near Tumkur, where her mother was found.
The question is: How many human beings would protect an abandoned puppy the way the dogs in two incidents mentioned protected human babiesIJ