Once there was a perfectly GOOD puppy who was not treated so good. He was homeless. A bum on the street. An undesirable in the community. A stray. A vagrant. He was on the OUTS with just about everyone he encountered.

Now we all know what happened when the little puppy went looking for help. He was screamed at. He was run off with a broom. He was called mean names. He got chased down a winding road with a rake. He got chased down another winding road with a pitchfork for heaven’s sake. He was even bitten by a mother bunny who wanted him to stay away from her baby. And if that was not enough, he got a hard spanking with a folded-up newspaper by an old man who just did not like puppies of any shape or size. This was no way to carry on around a perfectly GOOD puppy.

The puppy was harassed, harangued and humiliated. It was a tiring ordeal certainly. But it was definitely not a deal breaker. Because the GOOD puppy kept imagining a terrifically GOOD home for himself. He was sure it was going to happen and guess what? It did.

He got up on his tiny hind legs and peeked through a window at a boy’s birthday party. A party that was perfect in every respect except for one thing. No one had thought to gift the birthday boy with a puppy. But as it turns out, the GOOD puppy took care of that little oversight all by himself. The birthday boy, his Mom and his Dad knew a GOOD puppy when they saw one and they took him in. They waited a reasonable amount of time and when no one came to claim him. The family kept the GOOD puppy for their very own.

This title was part of a wonderful 1950’s series of Rand McNally Junior Elf books. Hard bound. Deep vivid colors and easy to read LARGE PRINT. All for the bargain basement price of $0.49!

These little books were sometimes FACT and sometimes FANCIFUL. And this one was packed full of suspense and danger at an emotional level accessible to young children. The illustrations are terrific and they make it very easy to imagine one’s self being chased all over the place by garden tools and hollering humans.

It is also made quite clear that none of this behavior is acceptable when meeting up with a GOOD puppy. The right response is not a fight or flight response. The right response is the act of warmth, regard, appreciation, acceptance, welcoming, sheltering and including. A richness of difference that the family did not know it was missing until the GOOD puppy appeared.

We can spend our days learning lessons from these wise Junior Elf stories. Or we can waste our time and our lives gathering with RABBLE who enjoy applauding when the spears and the tiki torches come out. To chase the equivalent of the GOOD puppy off to a place we choose to dismiss & characterize as “GARBAGE.”

Which will it be?