Gift of the Sacred Dog by Paul Goble

                                                                                    Sacred Dog

The gift of the Sacred Dog is a book written by Paul Noble, one of his many that sing of the Native Americans, or The People. 

 

 

How the horse came to the New World is fairly well documented.  Spanish and French explorers shipped them over early on in their conquest of the New World.  

Some horses either escaped or were left behind.  These horses became the mustangs, the wild horses that filled the plains and dominated history for the Native Americans.

But, questions niggle at my brain:  what did the indigenous tribes think about the horse?  Did they realize what the horse would give them?  Did they view the horse as an extension of the Spanish, as an animal to serve them, or what??

The book, Gift of the Sacred Dog, grants the reader a better answer about the horse.

Horses by Picasso

The horse benefited the Native Americans, allowing them to survive and prosper.  At least for a while, anyway. 

 This celebrates the beauty, nobility, and power of the horse, one of God’s creatures. This praises the strength and resilience of the People who honored such creation. 

 

 

The Crazy Goose

The crazy goose who never left

It was a cold November that year.  Snow moved in early, and my father was glad to have the crops in and the livestock secure.  He had watched the sky for more snow, and saw the last of the snow geese moving down from Canada.  The week before the sky had been full of them, and now there were isolated gaggles in their V-formation.

The following morning Dad moved the Farmall tractor with a trailer of hog feed through the gate.  Perched up on top of the feeder was a snow goose, its wing clearly wounded.  They glared at each other for a minute until the goose gave up and fluttered down to the ground.   Dad filled the feeder and speculated what the hogs would do to this lonely injured goose.

It didn’t take long for his question to be answered.  The hogs rushing in for their chance at the feeder were held back by one very obnoxious aggressive, albeit injured, goose.  Hissing and nipping at their snouts, the goose was the first at the trough. 

This would be the way of the goose and the hogs for the next few years.  During the coldest nights, the goose always found a perch on a pile of warm hogs.  At every feeding the goose was at the head of the line.

When Dad herded the hogs to be sorted for market, the crazy goose insisted in going into the sorting chute.  Getting it out back to the hog lot took a lot of effort.

Then another November day five years later, the goose disappeared.  Dad thought it might have heard the overhead geese calling and decided to join them. 

The next day Dad found feathered remains in the lot.  ‘Well, it had a good life, a long life,’ Dad thought. 

Let's take a few minutes to pray for the soul of our departed friend, the crazy goose....