It happened today, when I was on my way to work. My office is a few kilometers away from my home, and I usually make a morning walk of the distance. With the sedentary lifestyle that my work imposes on me, this is the only real exercise I get all day.

As I walked down a narrow lane, I sensed a strange restlessness among the street dogs. The dogs were running about in packs and barking threateningly at something round the corner. At this time of the day, they are usually calm and I wondered what the excitement was all about. The moment I walked round the bend, I discovered the cause of their sudden hostility. Parked on the side of the road was a van full of caged dogs, captured to be taken to the pound and possibly to be put to death later on.

The street dogs on the outside were running all around the van, barking intermittently. It was a strange sight and it struck me with awe. Here was a ‘lowly’ animal that not only understood the predicament that its fellow animals were in, but also had the mettle to protest vociferously against the injustice being done to them. If dogs are capable of voicing their protest against an unjust act, shouldn’t we as humans pack more spunk?

Should we not stand up for our fellow men when they need us most?

Standing alone in a narrow lane next to a pound-van was not exactly ‘stopping by the woods’ but there I was, lost in deep thought. And there was more to it. I observed that the dogs inside the van were curiously silent – almost cowering in fear. Did these dogs have the intelligence to understand that they were being taken to their deaths? Have we as humans underestimated the sentience of our fellow animals?

I could have gone on and on, but a sudden realization brought me back to reality. I had been observing the behavior of these dogs for quite sometime. It suddenly dawned to me that I had got it all wrong. You see - dogs are territorial by nature. They live in packs and guard their demesnes passionately. Closer scrutiny had revealed to me that the dogs on the outside were not barking at the men in the van ‘in protest’ as it first appeared to me. In fact their hostility was directed towards the dogs inside!

From the point of view of the pack of dogs on the street, the van consisted of a huge pack of ‘outsider’ dogs, which had invaded their territory. They were simply trying to defend their turf. This also explained the ‘silence of the dogs’ inside the cage. From the point of view of the caged dog, it suddenly found itself in an alien turf threatened by the ‘turf-owners’. Even though the number of dogs in the cage was far more than those outside, these dogs were not of the same pack and were therefore just individuals under attack by a pack of hostile dogs outside. No wonder they were silent and fearful.

So much for snap judgments!