As Hubby let Nuka in, I could feel the vacuum of cold instantly suck the heat from the room. I bent down to scratch his ears, which I knew would be cold to the touch. Schools were delayed or canceled. Vehicles whined in protest. Hubby and I had even skipped our morning walk, which is extremely rare. Why do we live in Wisconsin?
Nuka’s ears were definitely cold, but the odd thing is the fur on his paws was pink. He looked at me with eyes that told me he had been naughty; eyes that had a forlorn look; eyes that were in pain.
Rather than snuggle up into a Husky-ball in his favorite corner, he lay with his paws in front on him, licking the pink fur, trying to make it white. It wasn’t working. The more he licked, the more pink his white fur became. My heart began racing as I knelt to the floor and gently opened his mouth.
His tongue was raw, open and bleeding with gaping wounds.
With tears in my eyes, I hugged him tightly.
“Oh, Buddy, what did you do to your tongue?”
I bundled up to brave the negative 18 degree temps with a windchill factor which made it feel like negative 30-something. Turning on my flashlight, I knew there must be some fierce predator out there. Over the decades of owning Huskies, we have learned to secretly call our dogs CBK’s: Cold-Blooded Killers. An incomplete list of their hunting accomplishments includes: hundreds of mice and moles, a rabbit, 2 raccoons, an opossum, a woodchuck, a killdeer, a blue jay, 6 domesticated chickens and a duck (compensated and profusely apologized to the owners), and a juvenile wild turkey. There must be a dead animal or evidence of a fight on this freezing-cold February night.
Rather than a dead animal, my light revealed that Nuka got into a fight with our well.
A licking fight with the well.
A metal well cap, when the temperature was, I’ll repeat, negative 18 degrees Fahrenheit.
I know everyone’s mind is replaying a Christmas movie with a cult-like following, but this was serious. The best we can surmise is that, for some odd reason, Nuka licked the well. When he tore the top layer of skin off his tongue, it started bleeding. Nuka’s instinct then kicked in because he tasted blood. He must have thought the cold-metal well cap had blood on it (which it now did), so he licked it again. The positive-reward feedback system in his brain told him it was yummy and visceral and everything his wolf ancestors would have wanted, so he…kept…licking…the…well. Despite the pain.
By the time he came inside and had licked his paws, the same instinct kept repeating. There was blood on his paws, so he compulsively kept licking his paws, not realizing he was not taking the blood off of his paws with his tongue, but rather putting blood onto his paws with his tongue. We frantically watched this play out, in disbelief.
“How can he be so dumb?”
Hubby stared at me, shocked.
I knew I shouldn’t have said it. We raised our kiddos in a house where 4-letter words were not allowed. They were homeschooled and had never heard the ones most people consider 4-letter words, but I personally added my own motherly touch to the list by including ‘hate’, ‘dumb’, ‘stupid’, and ‘oh-my gosh!’.
The dictionary defines ‘dumb’ as ‘lacking intelligence; stupid’.
Is my dog dumb?? He just kept licking his paws, expecting them to get clean while damaging his tongue!
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” (-Rita Mae Brown)
I think many of us fall into this category. I would love to shed a few pounds. I walk four miles a day, I cook the majority of my food from scratch with whole, natural ingredients. I faithfully stand on the scale every morning, but the number doesn’t change. Every morning I wish the number to be lower, but wishing doesn’t make it budge. If I want it to change, I need to change.
Samson had his issues. One glaring issue was his refusal to marry an Israelite woman. Instead, he marries a Philistine woman who begs and cheats and manipulates. When things blow up, she is given in marriage to his best man. Samson’s next female relationship is with a prostitute, followed by his affair with Delilah. Every time I read about Samson and Delilah, I’m screaming inside, “Stop! Don’t you know she’s working for the enemy! She doesn’t love you! You’re so careful to abstain from alcohol and not cut your hair, but you’ll have sex with a prostitute and Delilah??” (Judges 16)
The Samaritan woman also had the insanity problem. When Jesus meets her at the well, where she is avoiding the judgement of people by going in the heat of the day, he confronts her husband problem. She’s had five husbands already, and the man she is now with is not her husband. We don’t know the reason she has been married so many times, but we do know she is living immorally at the time she meets Jesus. Here, at the very well where Jacob first met his true love Rachel, the Samaritan woman meets Jesus. She is confronted with the knowledge that Jesus is the Messiah, and leaves her water bucket to go share the good news with the very people she had been avoiding. The Samaritan woman is changed. We don’t know the rest of the story, but I wonder if she stopped looking to men and instead looked to the One Man!! (John 4:4-29)
“You can’t change your life until you change your mind.” (Dr. Lee Warren, Self-Brain Surgery, drleewarren.substack.com)
Nuka was not created in the image of God. As much as I try to pretend that he has human-like qualities, he’s actually just a dog. He’s an amazing dog, but a dog nonetheless. He was not able to overcome his instinct and stop destroying his tongue.
You, however, were created in the image of God. Your brain is not guided by animal instinct. You have the ability to make rational decisions and stop self-destructive habits! You are not a dumb dog! Examine your life. What are you currently involved in which is hurting you, yet you keep on doing it anyway?
If you have Jesus, you have the gift of the Holy Spirit living inside of you. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Self-control. You have it. What are you going to do with it? Today.
Nuka is now one week into his recovery and is doing just fine!
One thing I’ve realized is that people hate to be wrong. They will refuse to see the truth even when it’s staring at them in the face if they have to admit they’ve been wrong all this time. It’s hard to change, to make a 180 turn and admit your error. But you have to swallow your pride and change. For life.