The Love of Dogs©

The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too.
- Samuel Butler

Have you ever noticed that your dogs like some people and some they don't? Do you listen to your dog when he or she doesn't like someone? Even if you cannot figure out why your dog doesn't like that person, you should pay attention because our dogs can see through the person and into the person's soul. For the most part, when a dog doesn't like someone then that person usually turns out to be not so good. This is where our values differ from theirs. Dogs are not hypocrites, nor are they two-faced; if they don't like you, you will know right off. It doesn't necessarily mean they are going to attack you, but usually they won't have anything to do with you. Dogs have very unique instincts. Their instincts tell them things that we may never understand...like how a newborn puppy has the ability to know that a stranger is holding him, when he doesn't have his eyes open? And, how a dog can smell a person and know right off if that person is good and or not. No, their instincts don't tell them not to chew on the furniture or not to eat our favorite shoes. But it does tell them to value their owners and to love us unconditionally. The love they offer us is the exact same love that we receive from God. When we are upset and take it out on our dogs, they forgive us immediately. The same applies to God, when make a mistake and ask him to forgive us, he does immediately. God doesn't judge us by our bad furniture or chewed on shoes. He doesn't care what our furniture looks like or by what we wear on our feet. He judges us by whats in our hearts. If our hearts were more like our faithful canine, then could we be closer to God? Jesus tells us to "love thy Lord our God" and to "Love one another", the greatest two commandments. Dogs don't have a choice in choosing whether to follow the commandments as they have a one way connection to God. There is never any question about if they love God. If they didn't love God then they wouldn't love and honor us like they do. Their love and loyalty is a gift for us from God and we should be thankful for the blessing of having our Dogs!