Oh For Barking Out Loud In Lakeland!

Special by Lakeland Resident Jeanette Gray

We are a society of lovers of animals. For example, we have beautiful deer that walk through our yard every morning and eat my flowers, hostas especially or anything that seems edible. They bed down in our grass and just make themselves at home. We are really excited because we have had a plethora of young fawns bouncing all around. But I love them and so glad they feel comfortable.

This weekend however we got to know some of our neighbors in a different way. Good ol’ Facebook shared a heart wrenching story of a dog thrown in a storm drain. The whole community was in a stir. How could someone be so uncaring and mean to throw a dog away in a storm drain. Many were calling for a “tar and feathering” of the culprit if they were found!

Meanwhile, the dog kept barking. This was a weekend event where everyone from as far away as Pittsburgh were waiting to hear news of this poor mistreated animal.

As Firefighters were called, plumbers were summoned with cameras, kids’ radio controlled cars with cameras attached, and even drones, but more than all of those people who gave of their resources it was the neighbors. These people from different walks of life all had one focus….. a barking dog.

Watching this concern and seeing just how they worked together from sometime Saturday afternoon when the barking started till just a few minutes before 8pm on Sunday gave me a hope. Guess what these folks didn’t care what your politics were, they were not interested in your social status or even what your cultural makeup happened to be. They were interested in getting to the barking dog.

We have been blessed to be in this neighborhood (Plantation Hills) and today a barking dog brought us folks we would never have met. In the Bible we see passages about friends but this passage from Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 says just a little of what I saw in our community today – “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.”

Oh by the way, the barking dog… well, it turned out to be a barking tree frog.

 

 

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