A homeless man lived on the street with his two dogs.
As I snailed by in the morning traffic, I watched him feed them, arrange water in two stainless steel bowls and touch them lovingly day in and day out. It was quite lovely to observe their friendship, which happened to play out in full view of the public on a busy stretch of a main road where they lived.
Someone else who had been observing them on her daily commute, felt compelled to “help” him. So, one sunny summer’s day she hatched a plan to kidnap the dogs on the pretence that she was taking them to get food. She promised to be right back. Then, she drove them straight to a shelter for abandoned and rescue dogs and to my mind, drove herself home quite chuffed with her “good deed”.
The heartbroken man spent the next week roaming the street, talking to people and looking for his loved ones. He had no idea that he had been scammed.
The woman spent the next week, I would think, avoiding the man and talking to her friends about her kind rescue operation.
Somewhere between those two realities was the stranger who galvanized a whole community to find the dogs. People came forward in a show of solidarity, empathy and community and pieced together bits of info that eventually tracked the dogs down to the shelter and reunited them with their owner.
I saw the man with his dogs as I drove by today knowing that he will never know just how his public display of LOVE has warmed so many cold hearts passing by.
Today, I am grateful.
© A Heart Full of Stories, 2017
Lee Mayimele - Writer 