Some may be trained to help, but really it's in these beloved companions' nature to save us in ways big and small.

By TIM BUGANSKY for the StarTribune
Last update: February 16, 2008 - 4:53 PM


The selfless action of two dogs in Winona, Minn., gripped the nation recently. Bella and Maddie alerted their sleeping owners to a house fire. Sue Feuling and her 9-year-old daughter, Mckenzie, managed to rush out of the house before it was destroyed. The dogs perished.

When I was a boy and my own dog was dying -- we had, in fact, decided to have him put to sleep -- my mother and I went back to the woods to dig his grave. Rickey had been stranded overnight in the yard behind our house, his hip dysplasia having taken a sudden and irreversible turn for the worse. Before being helped up to the house, he had been stuck in a wet, low-lying area; flies had swarmed about him; his hind legs were infested.

There is a quiet nobility about dogs and their unspoken pact with the human race. I am reminded of it vividly when I see or read of heroic dogs like the ones in Winona, guide dogs, therapy dogs or search-and-rescue dogs. But your run-of-the-mill dogs, too, are really anything but.

I think dogs possess a profound wisdom about the nature of mankind, a wisdom that can elude us amid our busy lives, a wisdom we can cloud with grudges, biases and presumptions. They sense the inherent, simple goodness -- the potential -- in people, and they strive to bring it out, to nurture it. Dogs are accepting, trusting, selfless -- and I believe they, in their manner, understand that humans can be the same.

Since becoming a dog owner as an adult, I am less interested in material things, more aware of the basic but fundamental necessities of life: food, water, fresh air, shelter, someone to care about who also cares about you.

My dog intervenes in household arguments, planting himself between the disputing parties, diverting our attention, defusing our frustration. He is neutral yet, at the same time, on everyone's side. When I am stressed, he plants his head -- sometimes his whole body -- on my lap, shielding me from myself. This is fleeting, he seems to say; this will pass.

At night, he rises from his slumber and makes rounds, checking the windows when sudden noises catch his attention, occasionally blocking the bedroom door with his body. He wanders to the bed, sniffing, taking attendance. Sometimes I watch as he glances from the window, back to the bed, and back to the window.

Sometimes our eyes meet, and I wonder. Who knows what he knows? Who knows what he understands from his -- our -- ancestral past?

Dogs recognize people at their essence: not as builders of skyscrapers or makers of deals or earners of dollars. They see us as kind, concerned, vulnerable, human. And I think that we understand this, know that their presence in our lives can actually make us more human. Which is why stories like that in Winona demand our attention, occupy our thoughts. Which is why Sue Feuling's tale has resonated throughout the Internet and why she has been deluged by strangers with offers of new dogs.

Dogs see the best in us. We would do well to try to meet their expectations, just as they will strive to the end to protect us, preserve us, as best they can.

As my mother and I dug the grave of my childhood dog that summer day so many years ago, we heard a familiar jangling, echoing erratically down the forest path. Looking up we saw Rickey, hauling his massive body with his two front legs, his back two dragging limply behind. Having traveled a quarter of a mile, he lay down beside us, beside what was to be his resting place, watching over us one final time.