Motto “From my little loaf of bread Today I fed a dog and a man. Next day the dog still remembers, While the man hardly recognizes me. Now I sit and ponder, son Who’s the dog and who’s the man?” – Romanian folklore Today I learnt a great life lesson. Not from an eminent and learned philosopher or scientist, but from a dog. This dog was not someone’s pampered pet, but a stray dog, a community dog, as we call them in Romania. I was walking home after I left the office and I happened to see this dog in a yard. It was chewing diligently on a bone. It was a cute dog, white with brown and black spots and I stopped to look at it. It looked up and noticed me. I thought it was going to get upset and start barking. Instead, it wagged its tail, came to me and let me stroke its head. We played for some minutes, it licked my hands, then returned to its bone. I thought “well, that’s it, bonne apetit my little furry friend”. But what happened next left me speechless. The dog took the bone in its mouth and brought it to me, as if saying “go on, have some”. Remember, it was a stray dog. A delicious meal in the form of a big, juicy bone, is never guaranteed on a daily basis. And this dog had just one bone. Yet, he wanted to share it with me, as a thank you for playing with it. If we, people, would ever be so generous and giving like that dog! If we learned to give something to our friends in need, or even to a mere stranger. How many times we see the third world countries’ scary statistics and wail from the comfort of our sofas! How calmly we read of African children dying of starvation, while throwing our half-eaten lunch to the garbage bin! Most of us have more bones than we could eat in a month, figuratively speaking. Yet the thought of giving away just a little bit of what we have, makes us cringe. Oh my, what will I do? I ain’t that rich! Why don’t the billionaires give away things and money? The stray dog I played with didn’t have any qualms giving me all his fortune, as it was. But most of the people find it very hard to part with even a little bit of what they have. So I decided that I’ll never ever use the name of “stupid dog”, or “irreligious dog” to describe badly behaving people. It would be an insult to all dogs.