Can You Teach a New Dog Old Tricks?
Our dog Wolfie is definitely an integral part of our family. Some members of our family love him more than others (no names) but he definitely is an important presence for everyone in our home.
What drives us crazy about him, and I'm sure most dog owners can relate, is not the responsibility to feed, walk, clean and care for him, but the way he barks incessantly at anyone who comes in or near the house, especially men. We'll be sitting peacefully on the couch and suddenly the silence and calm is shattered by his loud barking. It is often quite jarring.
I recognize that he does this out of love: he is trying to protect us, the members of his den, from potentially harmful strangers. He is just lacking some basic social skills that I wish he would have picked up in the extensive training that we invested in when we first bought him. Instead, we recently got cited by our mail carrier; "Large, white sheep dog," she called him in her formal, lodged complaint.
In my opinion, the perfect dog would be one who knows how to show love for his family but doesn't disturb the serenity of quiet downtime by barking at every Tom, Dick and squirrel that passes by. But, at this point, as the saying goes, you can't teach an old dogs new social skills. Or boundaries, for that matter.
Studying the recent Torah portion, it seems that this might actually be an issue as old as the good book itself. Apparently, this canine instinct has been vexing us homo sapiens since time immemorial. Case in point: when our ancestors left Egypt, one would have expected the local domesticated pets to have been barking like hyenas.
Forget about the mailman. Here is an entire nation passing by the front window. It should have been a doggie ensemble. But yet, something miraculous happened: the entire dog population stood at attention and watched the Jews march out... in total silence. There was not one dog who barked at the Jews exiting en masse. For this reason the Torah instructs us to show our gratitude to the dog population and throw their way any treife meat that we encounter.
The Mussar masters teach us an important lesson from this Biblical passage. Imagine what the Jewish experience would've felt like if our ancestors would have had to contend with incessant dog barking when they were trying to leave peacefully and serenely with their families? It would have potentially ruined the moment, or at least mitigated the serenity of the experience.
They would have felt like I do whenever I'm trying to relax on the couch and Wolfie goes berserk at passing men. Yet this small, perhaps even involuntary doggie action is recorded and rewarded for posterity in the Torah. Imagine how significant a calculated, voluntary action performed by a human being with free will is when viewed from divine perspective? That would definitely be a mitzvah of biblical proportions!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Koval
