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Was that pooch an angel? A good question to ask today, during the Feast of Saint Roch, who was once helped by an angel taking the form of a dog.
This Italian saint of the 1300s caught the plague while nursing the sick during an outbreak -- a time when doctors often ran away from the filthy germ-ridden medieval cities along with panicked citizens. At that critical point, the story goes, an angel took the form of a dog and licked a plague sore on Roch's thigh.
However, in other stories like this one, the animal helper is not a disguised angel but just inspired by a higher power to assist -- as when the out-of-favor Hebrew prophet Elijah flees to the desert and is fed by ravens.
Both explanations crop up in modern tales, such as women facing would-be attackers -- who are suddenly escorted by a guard dog out of nowhere, shadowing them until they reach safety, then disappearing.
In fact, a third explanation for animal altruism also is made: Sometimes, it seems that the animal itself in spirit form may have returned to the physical world. During a radio interview in the early 1990s in Seattle, a paramedic told me that he was led to a wrecked car where a driver lay trapped -- led there by a yellow lab whose dead body was later found in the vehicle's rear seat. Thanks to the dog, its master was rescued.
This Italian saint of the 1300s caught the plague while nursing the sick during an outbreak -- a time when doctors often ran away from the filthy germ-ridden medieval cities along with panicked citizens. At that critical point, the story goes, an angel took the form of a dog and licked a plague sore on Roch's thigh.
However, in other stories like this one, the animal helper is not a disguised angel but just inspired by a higher power to assist -- as when the out-of-favor Hebrew prophet Elijah flees to the desert and is fed by ravens.
Both explanations crop up in modern tales, such as women facing would-be attackers -- who are suddenly escorted by a guard dog out of nowhere, shadowing them until they reach safety, then disappearing.
In fact, a third explanation for animal altruism also is made: Sometimes, it seems that the animal itself in spirit form may have returned to the physical world. During a radio interview in the early 1990s in Seattle, a paramedic told me that he was led to a wrecked car where a driver lay trapped -- led there by a yellow lab whose dead body was later found in the vehicle's rear seat. Thanks to the dog, its master was rescued.
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