The Running Doctors and The Nursing Dog

In Melbourne, the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team has a long tradition of putting on running events. One Sunday in the 1990’s we staged a marathon relay event for teams of 6 on a 2.5km course around Princes Park. When the race began the temperatures were quite cool but by 10 AM the temperature was well on the way to 30 degrees with a hot northerly wind.  We quickly put out another water station at 1.2 km on the course and were busy plying the runners with water and electrolyte. However these efforts were still not enough for 1 unfortunate soul. This young man had run a very hard 5 km leg and then because one of his team members had not turned up, he turned around and did the next 10km section. When he crossed the line he was a real mess, swaying in the finish chute in a mild delirium. We swiftly lay him down in the tent and applied cool sponges to his overheated engine. By some miracle a team of emergency physicians from a local hospital had also entered the race as a team and with the first aid officials on had were very quickly able to provide him with state of the art medical treatment before the ambulance arrived. While all this was happening a stray dog appeared out of the blue, entered into the tent a began licking this poor boys feet trying to revive him. It was all quite surreal. After ambulance took the boy away (he recovered well and was discharged later that day), the dog hung around with us till the end of the race. We all feel in love with this unusual stray dog and lavished our affection on him. We could not find any tags on the dog, and were about to make arrangements to take him to the dog’s home when he simply vanished from sight. Not even a woof. I still wonder where this dog could be now, and the kindness and concern he showed us.