Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Flashbacks and Demons

Flashbacks

I am inclined more to dogs than cats but love both... How can you not love a creature that loves you? I can't.

This is true even though as a soldier I have led a calloused life. It was at times like descending down the ladder of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I had to depend on what I knew was right even if I didn't always feel it in my heart. My upbringing gave me a moral compass to right and wrong. What I’m saying is that soldiers can cease to feel a civilized sense of decency but still make recourse to it as a sort of abstraction.

For this reason it is very hard for someone to understand what a soldier goes through without having been one. Most of us have enough to eat, get eight hours sleep and are not under a constant fear of being killed or maimed and cooked in the sun or plunged into the deep freeze . Living up to a year without many of the social amenities can wear thin, the social padding of civilized behavior. It is a brutal and primitive existence and there is a huge difference in how a hardened combat veteran and how a normal person maintain their world view.

The point is that someone, without a gut understanding of the mindset and conditions under which a soldier lives, should not be too judgmental. For that matter having been a soldier makes me more tolerant and forgiving of some of the awful things that people say and do. The point is that we need to understand the shoes somebody is walking in before we fly too far off the handle.

One of these is abandoning a pet by driving out into the country and turning them loose. Cats do better than dogs. They have a different relationship with humans and tend to be more pragmatic. This does not mean that they don’t suffer as much but rather that they tend to deal with it better..

Dogs love too much and when abandoned are clueless. They don’t do well when cast out and suffer terribly.

My inclination is to feel a deep and terrible anger towards those who abandon a pet in this manner. However, since I don’t know the full story put my judgment on hold. How could anyone do such a awful thing to a dog or cat that loves them? Even in Wisconsin during the wintertime if a dog or cat is fed they will get along fine. The problem is that for dogs they no longer have a strong enough instinct for the wild and don’t do well when starving, the snow gets deep and the temperature drops. For a while they can forage on road kill but when the snows come and temperature really drops all bets are off.

For those who toss an animal out, it is going to be an act that comes back to haunt them. It might not seem such a big deal at the time, faced with other “important” considerations but like the soldier that is hardened to the point of being almost sociopathic, one day they will look back on what they did and cringe as a flash back washes over their recollection. I’m reminded of the Lords injunction… “Forgive them for they know not what they do."