Natural Law and the Jack Russell Terrier

I have a dog.

My dog is a Jack Russell Terrier.

My dog is psychotic.

So if you’ve ever owned one of these high strung pooches, you know what I’m talking about. My dog is now somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 years-old and he’s still going strong. That is, of course, unless he’s “soundly sleeping” between my wife and me to the extent that she wakes me up to tell me she thinks that he’s dead. “Aw man! Now I have to get up and dig a hole in the yard. Oh well, one last Pat on the head for my best friend and faithful… Wait a minute! What’s this?! Yeah, he’s actually still alive. Go back to sleep.”

That was last winter one night.

Yesterday, the dog taught us all an important lesson about God’s design for the world.

It seems that one of the stray cats in our ‘hood had decided that the foot or so of space behind my shed was an ideal place to deliver a litter of kittens. In the morning, one of the kids let the dog out back to take care of his business and quickly noticed the dog barking at the tight passageway near the fence and the shed.

Seems he was just doing what God created him to do. From the Latin terra (land), these dogs have one mission in life – to chase vermin and other small creatures to the ground and, if need be, keep them there until a human master can come and take care of things. And here I thought terrier came from terrorize. Silly me.

The old boy still has some fight in him. Those kittens, on the other hand, narrowly escaped death.

I really don’t know why I’m sharing this story except that I find it amusing that my dog forgets his age sometimes and his instincts to serve his master still kick in. And I am pleased at that. I should learn something here. I will not chase animals to the ground. Also, I should probably strive to do what God created me for as well. To know Him. To serve Him. To love Him.

Woof.