by Michele G.
As a veterinarian, I have been “parabled” many times. During the course of my career, I have come to appreciate many clients and patients as teachers and know that there are lessons to be learned if I can only open my ears and heart and, at times, suspend belief. As is the case with parables in their truest sense, there have been uncomfortable twists to some tales, endings that I could not have anticipated and events that challenged my previous ways of thinking. Perhaps one of the most potent parables, out of the many, occurred on Christmas Eve 1983.
I was working a double shift that day as a technician at a veterinary emergency clinic on Chicago’s North Side. The evening was bitterly cold (it would plummet to – 25 degrees Fahrenheit) and concern among the staff was, as always, for the homeless people and animals who had no place to go for warmth, food and safety. Early in the shift, we received several calls from the far South Side about a dog who had been hit by a car and was lying unattended in a gutter. Our calls to the local police station, humane organizations and animal rescues found no one who would come and take the dog out of the elements and into a shelter. After a few hours, the calls from the public regarding the dog stopped coming. We all presumed that someone had stopped to pick up the poor pooch and get him to a place of warmth and treatment. Or, perhaps he had succumbed to his injuries.
About 10 p.m. that night, the doorbell to the clinic rang and as I peered out through the window, I saw a thin, older, shabbily dressed African American man cradling a large (approximately 40 pound) dog in his arms. I buzzed him in and he and the dog entered the clinic in a blast of frigid air and fog. It was clear that the dog had been injured and other staff members quickly surrounded the man and dog, wrapping each of them in heated blankets and bringing them to the back treatment area. It was only then that the doctor on duty made the connection that this was most likely the dog that we had heard of earlier in the day – the one who had been hit and left to suffer on South Ashland Avenue. Indeed it was. (more…)