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"Doubtful
it stood;
As two spent swimmers,
that do cling together"
William
Shakespeare
Macbeth, Act I, Sc. ii
While flood waters have receded in many
afflicted regions of the world, heavy flooding continues to swamp east
Asia as it has for the past two months. That leaves plenty of
opportunities to save dogs who haven't quite perfected their swimming
technique. ...And just as many opportunities for dogs to save humans.
BANGKOK (Thailand) —
AFP
reports that dozens of provinces throughout Thailand remain in the grip of
severe flooding which has left at least 55 people dead over the past six
weeks. No mention is made of how the animals fare, but at least one
drenched dog was ferried to safety on Saturday in a village north of
Bangkok.
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Practicing the "dog paddle"
while being carried across the swollen waters to safety, this lucky
pooch owes her life to a boy in Ayutthaya, a Thai village 80km north of
Bangkok, Sep. 14, 2002.
(Photo: Sukree Sukplang / Reuters)
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YUEYANG (China) — In the central
Hunan province, six major cities and dozens of villages were left at the
mercy of Dongting Lake, including Yueyang where waters reached
waist-high. In dog terms, that spells certain disaster, unless you
have some tall friends. (Photo below: Greg Baker / AP)
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The Golden Rule
As Spoken Around the World |
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Compiled
by: Graham
Sorenson
(Thanks Graham!)
Bahá'í Faith
"And if thine eyes be turned
towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbour that which thou
choosest for thyself."
Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, 30
Buddhist Faith
"Hurt not others with that which
pains yourself."
Udana-Varga
Christian Faith
"All things whatsoever ye would
that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the
law and the prophets."
The Gospel of Matthew.
Matt 7:12, Luke 6:31
Hindu Faith
"This is the sum of duty: do
naught to others which if done to thee would cause thee pain."
The Mahabharata
Jewish Faith
"What is hateful to you, do not to
your fellow men. That is the entire Law; all the rest is
commentary."
The Talmud
Muslim Faith
"No one of you is a believer until
he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself."
Hadith
Zoroastrian Faith
"Whatever is disagreeable to
yourself do not do unto others."
Shayast-na-Shayast 13:29
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But Wait, It Gets Better:
Dogs Save Humans
What prompts one species to save another? There are thousands of
answers to that question, but maybe one of them is simply
"payback". If that's the case, then these heroic people of
southeast Asia have indeed made good to repay a few favors.
Two years ago in Hubei (see photo above), China
Daily reported:
Dog
Saves Family (28 Jun 2000)
Although
the house owned by Wu Guangxing, a farmer of Hubei Province's Fangxian
County, was destroyed by a sudden landslide, Wu, his family and neighbours
escaped the disaster because of his dog's
prompt warning.
Right
before the accident, Wu and the others were having dinner when they began
to hear extremely pathetic whining of Wu's dog
from outside. As soon as Wu's wife untied the dog
from the tree, it ran into the house and began to drag its owner towards
the door. Feeling very strange, Wu went out of the house and found all his
pigs and cows restless and in obvious panic. He just had time to free the
stock and call out all his family and neighbours before a landslide buried
most of his house.
And a year before that, Beijing
Scene reported an amazing act of heroism during the floods of '99:
Dog
Saves People (4 Nov 1999)
A
furiously barking dog woke up 25 people and saved them from a flood that
destroyed their houses in China's southwestern Jiangsu province, the Beijing
Morning News reports.
Fan Zhibin was awakened by the small dog just before dawn on October 12
and found it pulling his quilt towards the door. He opened the door and
flood water poured into the house. Fan picked up his pregnant wife on his
back and rushed out.
Neighbors also awakened by the dog ran out into the street just before
their houses collapsed under the weight of water roaring from a huge
underground water pipe that had broken. Only after the disaster was over
did they notice the dog had disappeared, the newspaper says.
And so the moral of the story (that is, besides "Watch the Weather
Channel every day!") can be interpreted as this:
The Golden Rule applies to dogs, too.
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