I’ll spare you a corresponding photo, but Luna, our chocolate lab, tried to bring a dead rabbit into the house.
Not long ago, just after Luna began adjusting to us and as her new family, I took her outside for her final bathroom break of the day.
She sniffed around as usual and then slowly blended into the inky night. Chocolate labs are pretty tough to spot at night, unless you catch the light reflected off the backs of their eyes. I waited. Then sensing that she might smell something and head off after it, I called to her. Nothing. Again I called and a few more times.
I heard the jingle of her collar in the weeds and then she pranced back with something furry in her mouth.
Not quite the hunter, Luna found an already killed and gutted rabbit and brought the carcass back. She wanted to bring it inside and share it. I screamed. And she seemed stunned.
“Put it down. Put it down. No, girl. Get inside.” I said.
She dropped it–mortified. Clearly she was a mix of mystified and disappointed you could just tell by her face. She sneaked inside and kept checking back to see what could be the matter. For days after we hosed down the back area where she dropped her present she would sniff and make some attempts to roll in the smell.
Gone were her chances to provide for the pack, at least in that way.
I wonder if we’re like that too sometimes. Trying to provide or contribute, thinking we’re doing a great job, and really God knows that our contributions are more like rotten carrion. It’s incomprehensible sometimes to us why somethings we’re doing won’t work, but for reasons that escape us God wants us to put down our treasured booty and come back inside.
I don’t think God wants us to give up our “doggie-like ways” or our “doggie-ness”, after all God made us people entirely on purpose. He knows we tend to get into trouble sometimes. Nevertheless some habits are important and healthy to break. And just like I started attaching Luna to her chain during outdoor pit stops maybe sometimes we have to get reigned in too.