1000 Voices Speak for Compassion | Catch a Falling Star

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April 9, 2015 · 11:36 am

Compassion and Stray Dogs

I think compassion, if it is describing something real, is not so much a quality people have as it is a behavior that they sometimes exhibit and desperately need to turn into a habit. I have learned this best, I believe, in my relationship with the family dog. Dogs do have a natural empathy and loving strength of character that you learn about when a dog owns you and decides she is willing to keep you around for giggles and kibble.

Here is Jade the dog relaxing on her couch which she is sometimes willing to share.

This dog came to us in the late evening one spring night. We were coming home from religious services, and we had to stop the van because there was a puppy directly in the road ahead. She just showed up in the headlights, all big head and big belly, not really capable of taking care of herself, or even keeping herself from getting run over by the very next car that came along. She couldn’t have been more than a month old, still a little unsteady when she walked. She had a collar and a name tag, along with shot tags. We figured someone had accidentally let her get out of the house to wander and probably wanted her back. Well, we were wrong. The animal shelter was willing to take her, but that meant the risk that, if no one claimed her, she would be euthanized with all the other strays. She was too cute and instantly-attached-to-us to run the risk of that happening. The name and vet tags gave us no leads. We didn’t have the names of either owners or the vet who gave her the shots. She had become ours by default. I now suspect that she got out of her cage at the nearby Petco and the employees who lost her immediately wrote her off as deceased. No employee ever came looking, and, of course, when asked no one knew anything about it.

Here Jade Beyer is busy using Henry’s computer. She has her own Facebook page and everything.

Of course, kids love dogs and always believe they should have one, so no amount of warning about the consequences would dissuade them. So, in the first few months we had her, she totally decorated the carpets in the house with dark brown and yellow-brown stains. The kids wondered, “How did that get there?” and when I showed them how to clean up and house-train the dog (supposed to be their duty… ended up mine), they all three said, “Eeuuww!”

These aren’t actually our parakeets. Ours are all deceased.

The next winter, the dog killed all our parakeets. It’s not what you think. She didn’t eat them or anything. But wintering in the garage because of Mom’s reaction to new carpet patterns was something the dog really didn’t like. So she scratched her way to freedom through the garage door. And she chose a bitter cold January day to do it. So, the birds froze to death. The dog, in her fur coat and newly free of the garage prison, was insanely happy.

So you have to learn to make sacrifices to be owned by a dog. But there are benefits, too. I am a grumpy old man now with numerous health problems. But the dog gets me out three or four times a day to exercise me. She pulls me along by her chain all around the park and exercises my lower back by making me constantly bend over and pick up poop. I have become an expert at working through the pain to swoop up poop in an old donut bag or Walmart sack. Did I ever tell you what an amazing pooper that dog is? Five times every day! Six if I take her out five times! She seems to be capable of producing triple her own weight in poop every day. I would’ve wondered how she managed so much more output than she had input, until I started noticing what things were missing from the pantry and what wrappers were stuck behind the couch.

And a dog loves you no matter what. I am the first person to feed her when we brought her into our house. so she obviously believes I am her mother. I get grumpy and cuff her on the ears for biting my fingers when I try to pet her, and she still wants to be petted (and be able to bite me) even more. I swear at her when we are walking, and she just grins at me. She believes dammitdog! is her second name. And if she doesn’t get to sleep in somebody’s bed at night she whines. That doggy bed we got for her is apparently only to be used for dragging over the top of the latest poop or pee stain. So, being owned by a dog teaches you compassion by making you practice it every single day.

Last image borrowed from the Facebook page; The Peanuts Movie

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Filed under 1000 Voices Speak for Compassion, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as 1000 Voices for Compassion, compassion, dog stories, humor, pets, photo Paffooney, stray dogs, walking the dog

March 20, 2015 · 12:31 pm

When Compassion Fails

When I was contemplating what this post for 1000 Voices for Compassion was going to say, I read this insightful post by Melissa Firman; When the Bully is the Teacher. It tore a few more holes in my soul. You see, I was a teacher. And I was not the safe, self-satisfied, sit-behind-the-desk-and-pontificate sort of teacher. I was the walk-up-and-down-the-aisles-between-the-student-desks teacher. I was the look-over-your-shoulder-and-care-what-you-are-learning teacher. I took the risks necessary to connect with kids and find out what was really happening in students’ lives. I was definitely aware of teachers who belittled their charges and used negative comments and punishments to motivate them. I did what I could to steer those teachers in another direction. I was involved in campus improvement teams. I provided in-service training to my fellow teachers on methods and implementation and best practices. I was a department head for middle school English for a decade. I tried very hard to get other teachers to love kids too. But I learned very early on that for every hard-won, consistently-practiced teacher super-power that I developed there was an even more powerful bit of Kryptonite lurking somewhere. Bullying broke my heart my second year as a teacher.

Ruben was an eighth grade boy who came to my class late in the school year. He had moved south from big-city San Antonio, Texas to our little rural school because of family upheaval. He was a slight, short, skinny child with large, liquid brown eyes and a haunted stare that could pierce your soul. Almost from day one he was the center of attention for one of the eighth grade attack roosters in our little school. Vicente Feyo (not his real name) was a beginning Gold-Gloves boxer following in his older brothers’ footsteps. He was a fairly short kid, too, but muscled like an athlete because he trained as a boxer. The girls all loved Vicente and followed him like a flock of hens all around the chicken house. His only obvious objection to Ruben was that Ruben existed and was defenseless against any mean thing Vicente could think of to do. Fortunately, Vicente had been hit in the head enough that he couldn’t think of anything too terribly evil to do to Ruben. He called Ruben a girl in Spanish, belittled his manhood, and constantly treated him to the Feyo Stare of Death and Dismemberment. He would corner Ruben and say things like, “Just go for it, vato. What are you afraid of?” He forced Ruben to back down in front of girls. He forced Ruben to back down even in front of Ruben’s own younger sister who had caught up to Ruben in grades and was in the same class with him. The child was dying before my eyes. I had to do something. Our principal was a good man with a good heart, but Vicente had parents who were very prominent and powerful in our little South Texas Hispanic community. He couldn’t handle having to risk backlash in reprimanding Vicente over something that he told me, “…is just part of our Mexican-American culture. Boys just have be macho and strut in front of the girls. He doesn’t really mean anything by it.”

One day, after class, I pulled Ruben aside and tried to talk to him. “What can I do to help?” I asked. “I am not going to put up with him acting like that in class, or in this school,” I said, “but what else can I do?”

“You can’t do anything, man. You are a gringo teacher. This has to be between me and him. You just don’t understand, man.”

I didn’t understand. I thought teachers were heroes. Teachers are supposed to be able to solve problems like this. Of course, I was just a second-year teacher at the time. Maybe there was something I hadn’t learned yet. It was not going to be beyond my power forever… but it was.

Ruben solved his problem the following year. At the time the Bloods from L.A. hadn’t moved into San Antonio yet to become the San Antonio Kings. The Crips hadn’t moved into San Antonio and become the Ffolks. There was only a gang on the South Side called the Town Freaks. Ruben moved back to San Antonio and became a Town Freak. Nobody was going to mess with him ever again. One night they stole a pickup truck and went for a joyride. Ruben was riding in the back. When the police chased them, the truck overturned. Six Town Freaks were killed. Ruben was one of them. Nobody was ever going to mess with him again.

What does this have to do with compassion? It tore my heart out. I can’t write this post, even thirty-three-years after it happened, without tears blurring my eyesight and sobs wiggling my laptop. I still believe that if only we could’ve found a little more compassion in our hearts for Ruben Vela… if only more adults would’ve honestly tried to see things through Ruben’s eyes… well… you know.

I never use the real names of students in posts. They have a right to their own stories. They need to have their privacy respected. Ruben Vela is different. Somebody needs to remember that boy’s name whenever we pass off bullying as inevitable, as a part of our culture, as normal. I have never forgotten. Remembering what happened to Ruben made me more aware for the rest of my teaching career. It will affect me for the rest of my life.