The Little Bear Dog Blog

Little Bear on the sofa

When Little Bear was a tiny puppy, he met a Great Dane on the beach. A gentle giant, the Dane had been recently adopted by a lovely couple who told us all about his previous abuse at the hands of people, who sadly, will probably never stand in a court room to face their crimes.

Half of his ear was missing (I’ll spare you the details) and they’d lost count of the scars and cigarette burns this gentle soul had on his body. Watching him wag his tail generously at the seriously over-excited Little Bear who was trying to lick his face, it was impossible to know what he was thinking, but I’m sure that he wasn’t thinking about his horrible past.

I found myself remembering this meeting today as I pondered on the stories I regularly tell about Little Bear.  We all have them. They’re the ones we trip out by rote as if on some kind of autoplay. The owners of rescue dogs are always keen to share their ‘before I got him he was in a terrible state..’ type of tale.

In the number one slot for me, is probably the ‘he was such an angel until he was attacked’ story, backed up with probably way too much detail than the inquirer had ever bargained for!

We tell stories for many reasons. To solicit sympathy; to excuse (this was certainly one of my motives if I’m brutally honest); sometimes to entertain or to raise our own (perceived) status. But do they do our dogs any good?

If dogs don’t dwell on their own past, why, I wonder do we feel the need to do so on their behalf?  Personally, I think it’s rooted deep in our own egos. But this is where we also need to cut our own species a little slack for being ‘only human’.

Together Little Bear and I are re-writing his stories – while I put in some more work on the ‘only human’ side of things.