Photo and Commentary ©2023 by Maylan Schurch
Sabbath, October 14, 2023
Our south Renton backyard fence is surrounded by four families, and each of those families has at least one dog. To the left is a surprisingly grumpy golden retriever. In the yard to his right is a large and fluffy dog. The next yard over has at least one smaller and more irritable dog, while in the final yard are three little self-important dogs, only one of which (named Samson) barks.
Dogs, dogs, dogs. That means that our life—even at 6:30 Sunday morning—is always apt to be interrupted by barking. On the one hand, it can get a bit old. But on the other hand, as I always insist to these neighbors when they apologize to me, the recent rash of home break-ins makes me oh-so-glad that I’m surrounded by at-the-drop-of-a-hat barkers.
Friday afternoon of this week I heard barking outside, and glanced out the window to see what you see in the photo above. Straight out beyond our backyard fence is the large, fluffy dog, who—like the grumpy golden retriever to his left and (I think) the irritable dog to his right—are “only children,” with no one else in their yards to play with. This may explain their frequent barking, as they bellow into the void for companionship.
I wish I could have caught more vividly on camera what Large-and-Fluffy was doing. He was running toward me, disappearing momentarily beneath the fence, and then dashing away from me to the middle of his yard. In his mouth was what looked like a large black stocking, and he seemed to be imagining that he was playing some kind of tug-of-war with an imaginary friend. There he was, all by himself, having fun.
Anybody who grew up on a farm, as I did, understands that our Creator put a “sense of play” into the hearts of many creatures—maybe all of them if we could understand. Lambs leap with joy, cats and dogs chase their tails, calves frolic. Zoo-visitors see play-behavior in everything from monkeys to elephants.
God is a God of love, and joy, and it’s natural that His creatures understand often reflect this. There’s an extremely sensitive end encouraging answer to the question “Do animals go to heaven?” at the following link: