Much Ado About Dogs and Punctuality!

If any of us has the habit of always being late for appointments, let us learn from dogs and their instinct of punctuality! Yes, you read me correctly. Dogs are not only able to feel the time but they are punctual to the very exact minute! I will share with you some real life examples to illustrate my point.

Every morning at about 11a.m. from Tuesdays to Sundays, our dog, Bobby, would leave the house and head for the market at Jelutong, Penang. He knew how to cross the busy road and walk towards his favourite butcher stalls where he would rest and wait for some butcher to throw a piece of dog bone for him to take home!

When he returned, he would take a rest under his favourite granite bench beneath the guava tree where he would rest for a while before enjoying his gift of bone or meat. The butchers have grown to love him and to accept his familiar sight at the market.

Strangely Bobby would never go to the market on Mondays because the butchers rested on Mondays! Gosh! How could he tell the time and days of the week? Doggy instinct, I guess.

My neighbour, Irin, shared with me that her two dogs, Bobby and Bibi, would eagerly wait by the door at 5p.m. onwards until kind Aunty Helen brings along her home cooked food. Helen has only started to cook food for the two dogs when Bibi was nursing her puppies.

To share another example, is the story of the famous dog, Hachiko. Every evening, Hatchiko would turn up at Shubuya Station to wait for his owner, Professor Ueno to return from the University. The faithful Akita did that day after day for ten years. After Professor Ueno's death from a stroke, his family gave Hachiko away, but the faithful dog escaped to return to Professor Ueno's house, When he realised that the professor was no longer living in the house, he would turn up punctually just when the train arrived at the station. Hachiko became a national icon, a dog famous for his loyalty and seen as a quality that all Japanese should emulate.

I am sure that other animals and insects too could instinctively feel the time, but I am not a zoologist. You can find the details in Google. Human beings too once had the same great instinct of time, but we gradually lose this instinct after we learn to look at clocks and watches!

My beloved dog, Kamlette would eagerly await my return when the sun started setting.
Sometimes, if I knew I was going to be very late, I would phone my tenant and he would bring the phone to Kamlette, and my tenant told me she would wag her tail when I spoke to her. "Be a good doggy and see you later in the night." My tenant told me that after the call, Kamlette would be less fretful and would put her head on the floor to rest.!

Let us as homo sapiens, excel over the animals with our punctuality of time!