A 'Samaritan’ in All of Us?

Unless you live under a rock (where I find the best worms) you probably heard the story about the German Shepherd (Buddy) that led rescuers to his owner’s house. As the story goes, the owner Ben Heinrichs was working in the family garage when spark from a heater ignited gasoline. Buddy’s owner sent the dog away, commanding him “to get help”.

The family lived in an extremely rural area that the fire and rescue guys could not find. Buddy ran over a mile from the house to a fork in the road to lead a police car in the right direction.

Crawl out from under your rock and view the YouTube video of the entire event (through the eye of the cop car camera) via the link below.



There are endless stories of how all sorts of creatures have saved the lives of their owners or others. They apply courage, empathy and a loving energy. Which brings me to humans and their capacity to do the same thing.

This weekend, a street person in New York came to the rescue of a woman who was attacked by a purse-snatcher. His selfless act saved the woman (and her purse) but in the end he was stabbed. Now here’s the kicker, the homeless man lay bleeding to death on the sidewalk (after all he had done for the woman) while person after person walked right by him. My foster mom (Jet) and I watched the incident on TV and boy did she get mad.

I guess what neither of us could understand was how a dog could be so compassionate and helpful while so many humans simply looked the other way. Imagine dogs making humans look so lame.

What’s up with humans? You like saving money, you fight to save energy, you lobby to save the environment but you don’t want to save the life of one of your own.

As my foster mom would say, “Are you on crack?”

Seriously, humans need to take a long, hard look at the Lassie Samaritan inside their heart. I had to “probe” (my new word for the day) Jet to explain this term for me. Essentially, Lassie the collie is renowned for rescuing people she loved but the Good Samaritan (from the Bible) is about helping or rescuing anyone, including strangers.

Humans! Take note.

Okay, here’s the question of the day from MANDY who asked: I can’t sleep without my ‘bug-bug’. It’s my tiny stuffed ladybug. My mom takes it away periodically to wash it and I can’t sleep (so she doesn’t sleep) until it dries two days later. Help. – Sleepless in Texas

Dear Mandy (Sleepless in Texas)This is one of those easy to solve problems. I wrote your mom and told her to buy a second ‘bug-bug’ for you so you always have a back up when one of them is being washed.




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