Now Jeff, my fierce, handsome German Shepherd, has been gone nigh on three years. But this morning, as I read the news about the judiciary and stray dogs, I could have sworn I felt him beside me. And sure enough, from somewhere in the heavens, came that deep, throaty growl I knew so well.
“Master,” said Jeff, “I hear they’re talking about stray dogs and the courts.”
“Yes,” I sighed, “sad situation, Jeff. People bitten, children hurt, and now a legal tussle about what to do with them.”
Jeff wasn’t having any of my melancholy. “Do you remember,” he said, “how you dealt with that stray once?”
I smiled. Oh, I remembered. We were walking down the road one evening, You looking every bit the aristocrat with your pedigree coat and proud gait, when we saw that scruffy stray hit by a car.
“I was furious!” said Jeff, his tail in heaven still bristling at the memory. “Here was I, a pedigreed German Shepherd, walking with my master, and you—you—ran to that stray’s side!”
“Yes,” I said, “and I brought him home.”
“And you let him live with us,” Jeff continued, “even though I gave him my coldest, iciest stares. You fed him, nursed him back, and when his limp stayed, you didn’t throw him out. Pluto lived in our house till he died.”
There was a pause, and then Jeff said something that made me swallow hard. “Master, if people want strays, they should adopt them—like they do children. That would be the right thing. Not dumping them back on the street to fend for themselves, not letting them breed and suffer. Give them a home, give them a name, give them love.”
From somewhere beyond the clouds, I heard a sharp, joyful bark.
“That’s Pluto,” Jeff said softly. “Your stray. The one you adopted. He’s here with me now. And master…” Jeff’s voice dipped to a whisper, “Pluto loved you more than I did.”
I chuckled. “Impossible,” I said.
But Jeff only wagged his tail, and I knew he wasn’t lying, because he loved my missus more than he loved me!
But Pluto the stray loved me.
And here’s the thing—the judiciary can make rules, the municipality can pass orders, and activists can shout themselves hoarse, but the real solution is not in paperwork, petitions, or public protests. It’s in compassion backed by responsibility.
Strays are not statistics. They are living beings who’ve been failed by human neglect. If we truly care, we’ll stop debating “what to do with them” and start doing what Jeff suggested—adopt them, one home at a time.
Maybe then, the next time heaven calls roll, it will echo with happy barks—from pedigrees and strays alike—both grateful for a world where love, not law, had the last word.
But like Jeff said, “If you love strays so much, take them home, like you take home a child you adopt..!”
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