JEDDAH: Consider this the canine form of clemency.
According to a report on the website of the MSNBC network in the US, two Dalmatians were rescued from an animal control center that was planning on putting the animals to sleep.
An irresponsible owner had abandoned the two animals that ended up in a Saudi kennel where they had been kept for the past two years.
An American woman working for an oil company discovered the doomed doggies, whose names are Pongo and Juree, and spent $3,000 of her own money to get them adopted in the US.
On Tuesday they arrived at Dulles in Washington DC. One of the adopted pet owners is a fireman in Maryland. (The Dalmatian has historically been associated as the informal pet mascot of fire stations in the US, for some reason, so perhaps the breed of the dog and the profession of its new owner are somehow linked.) The report didn’t name the woman who rescued the animals or in what city they were being sheltered.
While Islam regards dogs as unclean — appropriate only as watchdogs or shepherds — there is a hadith about a person who had his sins forgiven by providing water to a thirsty dog in the desert.
Whatever moral lesson is being underscored in this hadith, one thing is certain: The Saudi shelter kept these animals alive for much longer than a typical US animal control shelter would have.