Human Kindness

There was an article in the paper today about a little dog called Bibi, that got blown off a pier in Melbourne. The windy weather was so powerful that little Bibi simply trotted air-bourn off the edge of the pier and into the frigid north Melbourne Ocean.

Bibi’s owner watched helplessly from the pier edge and her little pet tried desperately to swim back to shore in the freezing temperature, battling wave upon wave which relentlessly held him back and pulled him down.

In the midst of all this, a young man was also visiting the pier to scatter his grandmother’s ashes into the ocean. While deep in ritual and farewell, he spotted the precarious fate of little Bibi and thought nothing of diving into the icy waters to rescue one very sodden, very cold miniature canine.

A Midler song sprung to mind… just one line. ‘Human kindness is overflowing, and I think it’s going to rain today’. Buried in the pages of global crisis, earth quakes, human loss, scandal – the story of a dog made the greatest impact on my day. Maybe it’s because I love dogs so much, perhaps because little Bibi reminded me of my much loved furry ruffians. I don’t really care to analyse why I felt the way I felt, but that it hurts and feels good in equal parts to know that there are those that cannot defend themselves and then there are those who would risk it all to do it for them.