"Take my world apart" - Lessons for surviving friendly dogs and conquering poverty

Today, a dog tried to eat me. Well, not completely, but it sure felt like it. There I was, with this (big) beautiful dog, super friendly and all (really, really big), and I was getting all sorts of tail wags and kisses. No problem. Every sign that I was reading from this (did I mention she was really big?) dog told me she was friendly. Her owner asked me to help put on a harness and size it. I was on one knee and having a hard time sizing it because she was so busy licking my face. I stood up and slipped it over her head, then pet her and began to clip it under her arms, just behind her forelegs. At the exact moment that I got both hands underneath her and I was bent so that her and I were literally nose-to-nose, she froze, for just a quarter of a second. No wagging, no movement, no licking. It was all the warning I got, and it was so fast, I had no time to react. Before I could finish my thought of "hmm, that's not good", she went ballistic. She lunged for my face and made the most terrifying growling, roaring, "I'm gonna kill you" noises while snapping and gnashing her teeth. In my face. Practically on my head. I felt her breath on my ear, and her nose actually grazed my cheek just under my eye.

Afterward, I got all kinds of questions from my coworkers. What happened? Is she just crazy? Why didn't the owner tell me she was aggressive? Why did she do that?

See, we all make assumptions. Every one of us; it's just natural. The more we think we know, the more assumptions we make. Homeless people just want booze money; people on welfare are lazy; people who dress nice are rich. The fact is that the homeless guy you just shunned is hungry and cold; that woman on welfare is working two crappy jobs; that guy in the nice clothes and sports car is so far in debt he doesn't know how to get out.

For me, the assumption was simple. I'm a dog trainer, a good one, with lots of experience, and I know how to read dogs. I assumed that the owner would tell me if her dog was aggressive. I assumed that because the dog was friendly, she would stay that way. I assumed that I would get typical warning signs if she was going to become aggressive. I assumed that I would smoothly get out of the way, as I have done a hundred times before, before I got bit. But I was wrong. The fact is, the dog was a rescue with an unknown past, and the owner had only had her for two weeks. For whatever reason, the dog was severely distraught by people reaching around her midsection, and I was the lucky first to find that out.

I did recognize, however, that the dog didn't harm a hair on my head. Not so much as a scratch. Sure, I needed to change my pants after the incident, but by being as scary as she could muster, she told me to back off without hurting me. I was lucky. I could have been seriously hurt because of my assumptions.

Tally talked a while ago about the posture by which we come to God. It isn't high and mighty, all-knowing and expert. It's on your knees; when you can't defend yourself, you can't save yourself, you can't fix it, and you surrender everything you thought you knew. That is how we get to salvation. But somewhere along the way, we start feeling good and we stand back up. We think we've got it all under control until the dog bites you right in the face. It's then that we realize we don't know anything at all. It's then that we can learn.

Because when we think we know it all, that we're the expert, we forget there's so much more to learn. We forget there's someone who knows much more than we do. We forget it's not all about us. How many people will pass by the guy with the sign that says "Disabled--need shelter and food--anything helps". How many times will you walk by him and think to yourself about all the things he should do, how uncomfortable he makes you feel? What if you are the person that could have saved him? What if he dies in the cold tonight because you assumed you knew what he should and shouldn't do, but you didn't bother to help him?

Imagine a world where we were all faced with the consequences of our actions, where we saw the end result of every decision we made. I think there would be a lot of guilty people out there, myself included, but I also think that we'd start making better decisions. But that's not reality. Reality is, some bum freezing to death is only news because the weather got cold enough to kill someone. It's sad, sure, but surely your five bucks wouldn't have mattered anyway. Buying him a cheeseburger or giving a spare blanket wouldn't have made a difference.

Would it?