By João Gabriel Silveira

 A hero, to consecrate himself as such, does not need to move on two legs, communicate or possess special techniques. You don’t need to be decorated by your country or simply remembered. The enough is to perform a beneficial action at an opportune time for a life, whatever it may be. A dog named Appu is a remarkable example of this.

 One day, in a village in Pathanamthitta, Appu accompanied an elephant named "Shivasankaran", which was being taken by its owner to bathe in a nearby tank. In a moment of carelessness, his manager distanced himself, and Shivasankaran, thirsty, ended up stopping to take water in a land of fragile soil. At this point, part of the land gave way and the elephant was trapped inside the mud puddle. Appu, realizing the gravity of what had occurred, began to bark tirelessly, seeking to get the attention of the person responsible for Shivasankaran, who was nearby. The caretaker listened and searched for various ways to get the elephant out of the situation, until, with the help of the village population, they managed to free the large animal. Based on this, it can be seen that, if Appu were not there to draw the attention of the caretaker of the great animal, the ground could sink further with the weight of Shivasankaran and he could die drowned. But the unexpected happened and the elephant was saved by Appu’s insistence and human labor.

This story teaches us, therefore, that to become a hero, it is enough to do good for something or someone. History will never remember all the existing heroes, but each heroic act will remain in the memory of those who have experienced the moment and it will be up to them, therefore, to feed that memory and pass it from generations to generations, the hero being a human being or a simple four-legged animal.