Rosemary & Steve Knowledgebase

You know, almost nothing makes me and Rosemary happier about our new dog, than having her sit at the entrance to the hall while we're giving a Dhamma talk. She came up for a little while today. She's still there? Ah, nothing makes us happier for her. She's listening to the Dhamma! I understand last night she went berserk a bit because she heard a dog in the Dhamma tape. The longest living dog here, which many of you knew, was Bear. And Bear lived here 13 years. Bear was classic, every night she sat on the steps, just about every night. We think somehow something got in there. Bear would go down to the chanting with the monks and nuns, listen to the chanting. Yeah, we think something gets in there. We think it becomes a part of their Kammic makeup, and it will benefit them in a future life.

Dogs and cats having a chance to be reborn as humans, yes. Domesticated ones especially, they're kind of on the top of the scale of the animal realm. I mentioned yesterday or the day before about the realms, well, they're on the top scale of the animals. Maybe they're burning off the last bit of their bad Kamma, and we can expect that they might get a chance to be human next time. If they've had a lot of time of looking at monks and nuns, getting bathed by a nun, being given special treats by a nun, and being hugged by every meditator around the place, watching people go walking back and forth, isn't this going to be part of their Kammic makeup? Isn't Joni therefore getting some wonderful gift of being born here, rather than being a mangy dog born on the streets of Surat Thani?

And sure we can help them. Say when they're doing something bad, playing with the frogs and whatever we said the other day, yeah, try to stop them! Try to make sure they don't do it, because dogs and cats in particular can be trained. There's a cute story Rosemary's father gave us many years ago. When he went to Indonesia, he was the Air Attache with the Australian government. They were given the house to use that the old Air Attache had had. They changed every two or three years, so they give him the same house, which had a dog. Fine. But Rosemary's father discovered that as soon as he took the dog for a walk in the first couple days, all of a sudden, he'd be walking along and , the chain would be yanked out of his arm. The dog chased cats! And he found out that the old Air Attache just loved having the dog go and chase a cat. He obviously had a warped sense of humor, and he trained the dog to do it. Rosemary's father was having his arm yanked all the time the first couple days. He goes, "No, no way." On the third day, he kept a rolled-up newspaper with him, the dog went like that and he went , don't do that! The dog goes, "But, but, I always got petted before!" So, the dog's totally confused, but it worked after a few days. It didn't take long because dogs are easy to train. He thought it was the funniest thing in his whole life, he's walking the dog, a cat is going by, the dog sees the cat and goes "humph" with his nose in the air. Yeah, yeah, we can help train them to have better Kamma.