Are dog’s ungrateful animals?

“Dogs are highly grateful animals,” according to my experience. Once a street dog in my city recognized me when I stood before him after a gap of some 3 years; it came wagging its tail very vigorously at me. I strained my head. Ah yes, then I remembered that I had fed this dog with the left over’s of my snacks one fine afternoon...

Yet, in the Southern part of India and in my Tamil language I have heard people cursing an evil man, “You, ungrateful dog?” It baffles me. How could a dog be grateful and ungrateful at the same time? No one could explain the riddle to me. But the saying goes on. I wonder if the same applies in other Indian languages as well.

Then one day I did discover the explanation behind that saying. My wife happened to be in the hospital for a very long time. Our dog Lassie (a female) used to be very fond of her. Lassie behaved like a security guard following my wife to every room in the house she happened to go during the day. After we returned from a shopping trip. it was my wife the dog greeted first with gusto; Lassie would come to me for a ‘casual’ hullo only later.

After six weeks, my wife returned home, not as a living human being but as a lifeless human body. She was brought home dead at 2 a.m. that great January 2010 day. One does not welcome home a dead person with any aplomb. Nor did Lassie greet her mistress.

Some two hours later, I goaded Lassie to smell the still body, which she did with some curiosity. Lassie smelt the body all right but she didn’t wag her tail at a person long known to her. Had Lassie forgotten her erstwhile mistress and so soon? She did from all accounts. It appeared as though Lassie had removed my wife’s name from her memory list.

A couple of days later, having completed the funeral ceremony, I asked Lassie, “Lassie, where is mummy?” No reaction. Wouldn’t even look around for her. In the earlier days, just a mention of the word ’mummy’, Lassie would run to the door or peep into every room for ‘mummy’. Not any more. My wife has been struck off from her list of known people.

Can’t we then call my Lassie, an ungrateful dog because she couldn’t even remember that it was her mistress who used to serve every meal to her. Often when Lassie sulked, my wife would patiently sit down by her side and feed the dog with her own hand like she used to feed her own little son or daughter a then Lassie would eat up every piece of pedigree. Had Lassie forgotten all these ministration?

Perhaps because she has turned into an ungrateful dog as far as her ex-mistress was concerned.