Two Worlds Collide

On Wednesday, the sophomores took a fieldtrip to the Hindu Temple. I volunteered to be one of the chaperones. Since it was a Wed., I had Bingo with me so he got to expand his world view. Here we are at the start of the morning waiting for the students to arrive. Christy, one of the religion teachers, was one of the leaders of the fieldtrip and we were on her bus. She's looking over her list of students. Bingo supervised the loading of the bus.

It only took about 20 minutes to get to the temple, which took 10 years to build. They brought over craftsmen from India to handcarve the cement. When we got there, our hosts said that Bingo wasn't allowed to go into the temple proper but could go into the meeting are where the yoga, math and dancing demonstrations were being held. I was a bit disappointed as dogs play a role in Hinduism: mainly one of messenger, not an unlikely role when you think about it, for Yama. However, I thought that putting up a fight would not be the best move and pulling out the statute would only antagonize the family who was kindly showing the temple to our entire sophomore class for the second year in a row, so I refrained from fussing. It was a good thing I did too!

Here you see Bingo calm, cool and collected. But let me tell you, only moments earlier, I had a twisting, barking demon dog on my hands. Seems that Bingo can't STAND incense. At least that is what I finally deduced. When we first walked into the meeting space, all was fine. We sat and the yoga demonstration started. I got Bingo to lie down and then the problems started. As soon as he was near the carpet, he popped up. I would get him down again, up he popped: down, up, down up. I thought, "Hmmm. Perhaps he needs to poo." So went on a poo walk." Came back and it started all over again. Then HE BARKED. TWICE. He's never barked. EVER. Even Tim was startled. This was a serious personality disorder. Something was off. I had tried walking, I had tried to get him to busy, but nothing was working. So we left and I sat on some stairs. Bingo laid down and fell asleep, grateful that there was only the concrete smell in his nose.

So we stayed outside the rest of the fieldtrip and waited for the kids. I guess the Gods were watching out for us when they prevented Bingo from going in the temple. With all the incense there he would have had a serious fit. It's nice to know Yama was watching for him and had his back.