Fed to Death

What do you think is the most dangerous dog?

The karate instructor was an intelligent man, and he immediately realized there was a catch in the question. So he answered cautiously:

“I don’t know much about dogs, but I’d guess some kind of strong, heavy dog.”

He started naming Rottweilers, Great Danes, and other large breeds.

The dog trainer smiled slightly. Not mockingly, and not to make the other man feel ignorant. Then he said:

“The Malinois. The Belgian Shepherd.”

When the karate instructor saw photographs of the dog, he was almost offended. It was relatively small, lean, and slender, and certainly didn’t look like some terrifying beast.

Then the dog trainer explained something simple.

To knock a person off their feet, two factors matter: weight and speed. If you hit someone with a twenty-kilogram pillow, its sheer weight might knock them over. But how can a tiny bullet, weighing almost nothing, knock someone down? It has to travel at tremendous speed.

And that is precisely what makes the Malinois so dangerous.

But the danger isn’t limited to its ability to knock someone down. This dog is incredibly fast. It can clear obstacles, climb walls and trees, and move through places where a large, heavy dog would struggle. Simply running away from one is practically impossible. The same cannot be said of heavier breeds such as Rottweilers, Cane Corsos, or Great Danes.

A few days ago, I saw a woman walking a Belgian Shepherd.

The dog had been so overfed that it looked like a sausage on legs. Running was out of the question; even walking was difficult, and it struggled to breathe. You could see how it spread its legs, how much effort every movement required, and how much strain its joints were under.

I looked at that dog and thought: somewhere inside, the Malinois is still there.

Its inner nature probably still longs to run, chase, jump, search, sniff, climb, bite, and carry out a task. But its physical condition has made it almost impossible to do what it was created to do.

A Belgian Shepherd needs activity. It needs to run, jump, search, chase, and work. But when all of that is replaced by a quiet, sleepy existence and a food bowl that is always full, both its discipline and its very nature gradually deteriorate.

Rav Alex taught that one form of trial, and sometimes even a curse, is called “ora”: when a person is given so much good that they no longer notice how the excess itself begins to destroy them from within.

Trials do not always come through deprivation, pain, or need. Sometimes a person is tested through fullness, prosperity, comfort, and abundance. Everything looks like a blessing: there is enough of everything, the cup is full, and nothing has to be earned through struggle. Yet this is precisely where a person may fail.

You can endure hunger and fail to endure fullness. You can endure poverty and fail to endure prosperity. You can survive the struggle and break down when there seems to be nothing left to fight for.

That overfed Malinois stayed with me. Deep inside, it still possessed the nature of a dog created to run, search, jump, chase, and work. But too much food and too little movement had almost robbed it of the ability to be what it truly was.

You can be fed to death.

Pay close attention so that your fullness does not become your enemy. Even in complete comfort and abundance, do not lose your momentum, your discipline, or the nature of your inner self.

Don’t let yourself be killed by being overfed.