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Aesop's Fables, translated by Laura Gibbs (2002)

77. THE DOG AND THE GARDENER
Perry 120 (Syntipas 34)

A gardener had a dog who had fallen into a well. The gardener lowered himself down into the well to pull the dog out, but the dog only gave the man a nasty bite, thinking that the man intended to plunge him even deeper into the water. After the dog had bitten him, the gardener said, 'It serves me right for making such an effort to pull you out of the well, when all you can do is attack me.'
This fable indicts people who are foolish and ungrateful.


Source: Aesop's Fables. A new translation by Laura Gibbs. Oxford University Press (World's Classics): Oxford, 2002.
NOTE: New cover, with new ISBN, published in 2008; contents of book unchanged.