Wisdom

23rd February 2020

Last week, I saw a dog that was brought in by a father and his son. This dog started showing aggression and has bit the owner and his 8 year old son a couple of times. There was talk about rehoming a vicious dog. In the consult room, the dog appeared to be very friendly and curious, just like a 14 month old dog would. I asked the father to describe the situation leading to the sign of aggression. The father replied that the dog was lying in bed and had just woken up. His son then reached over to pat the dog. That is when the dog growled and snapped. In addition, the dog had a vomiting episode the day before and diarrhoea for the past 5 days. The second time it bit happened under similar situation. Prior to those incidents, it had never happened before.

I asked the father how did he feel about the situation and he expressed his concern regarding the dog starting a path to become an aggressive dog. He was worried and concerned about the safety of his child and that it was not what he expected from a family pet. I asked the son the same question and he replied, “Next time, I will wait until he (the dog) comes to me.” He said he loved the dog and did not fear him at all.

Without complicating matters and reading into too much, it is clear that the aggression was a result of circumstances created by the father and son. Once explained, the father was much relieved and professed that he loved the dog greatly and did not want to consider rehoming anyway.

What was interesting (to me) was that the son showed much more thought, consideration, empathy and common sense in this situation. Without too much prompting or suggestion from me, he came up with the reason and solution himself. Wisdom certainly knows no bounds and is not restricted by age. In fact, increasing age could have negative effects on wisdom! Why is this so?

Perhaps when we get older, our responsibilities increase leading to increasing fears. The fear of a child getting bitten under our care. We hear horror stories of children being mauled by certain breed of dogs. We are exposed to horrible news in the world. The internet has brought the isolated incident of tragedy across the globe to our hands in our smartphones and into our minds.

As ‘responsible’ adults, we start to make rules to bubble-wrap our children. In some primary schools, throwing snowballs is prohibited in case there is grit or soil in the snow causing harm on impact. They are not allowed  to take birthday cakes to class in case there is someone with an allergy and have a ‘birthday cushion’ to sit on the whole day to mark the special day instead.

The reality is most of the time, everything will be fine. Perhaps a tiny percentage of children may get hurt by a flying snowball (whether there is grit in it or not!) and a child may not be allowed cake due to allergies (which the parent would have declared from the start of school anyway). When the children are asked about the situation, their answer is usually ‘I don’t mind.’ It is mad to manage a risk by a widespread ban. But hey, as responsible adults, it is the right thing to do.

Sometimes, we may find answers and explanations to difficult questions through a child’s eyes. We can either look for the inner child within us or simply ask a child. Let’s remember that wisdom does not necessary come  with age and we were perhaps wiser in the past before our environment changed us.

The internet has made knowledge abundant but wisdom remains scarce.

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