Gone To The Dogs

I am a dog thief. At least that is how I am described by the law. I have ‘stolen’ over three hundred and fifty dogs over a period of five years. It is possible that I have stolen more dogs than anyone else in Canada and possibly North America. But I don’t think of myself as a thief, and I certainly don’t feel like one. And neither do the dozen other ‘dog thieves’ I am honored to have known and worked alongside. We are, and always refer to ourselves as, dog rescuers. We rescue abused and neglected dogs who suffer at the hands of their owners; dogs that have been starved, beaten, or cruelly confined, dogs who have been physically or emotionally tormented by living permanently inside pens, sheds, garages, closets, attics, crates or on the end of chains. We do this because the SPCA cannot or will not help them. Animals in Canada have essentially the same rights as your toaster. It is perfectly legal to put an eight week old puppy on a chain and keep her there for the entirety of her life. She could spend every minute of her life never moving beyond the length of her chain, never knowing the joy of running free or chasing a ball, never experiencing being a part of a family or even the touch of a human hand. As long as she is kept alive by providing her with food, water and shelter no SPCA cruelty investigation officer will do anything to end her suffering. The organization whose stated purpose is to prevent cruelty to animals, in reality, has little will to do so. This is why private rescue organizations exist, and why so many of them take the law into their own hands. Animal rescuers know well that they are often the only hope for a suffering animal. Our compassion compels us to risk imprisonment. Rescuing animals is not a choice for us. It is our purpose, our passion and our mission. We don’t see ourselves as different from others in our concern about the cruel treatment of animals. When faced with an animal in distress, we believe most people would feel compelled to take action to help them. But to liberate an animal that is suffering at the hands of their owners usually means risking jail. Compare this to taking the same actions to relieve the suffering of a child. If a child is being beaten or starved or kept outside in freezing temperatures or scorching heat, confined to a pen or chained to a tree, not only would it be legal to rescue them, it would be morally and legally wrong not to. This huge disparity between the rights of animals and the rights of humans to be protected from suffering is not based on a proportionate disparity in their ability to experience pain. We are well aware that animals experience pain as intensely, both physically and emotionally, as humans do. Animals don’t have their rights protected by law for one reason and one reason only – they can’t fight for them. It is rare in human history that people have fought for the rights of others - few white people were active in civil rights demonstrations, few men have stood beside women in their fight for equal rights, few heterosexuals have joined in gay and lesbian marches. It is a sad aspect of human nature that we are rarely interested in anyone else’s rights but our own. In fact it is far more common for us to resist another group’s fight to have their rights protected by law in a misguided belief that our own rights will consequently be diminished. So it is therefore no surprise that animals, who are unable to fight for their own rights, have so few. They must rely on us to fight for them. And so far we have failed them miserably. As with any passion, animal activism has been the source of my greatest joy and my deepest torment. When in the depths of sorrow I have often found myself envying people whose hearts do not ache for a suffering animal. How peaceful it must be to lie in bed every night and not be tormented by a dog you know who is being starved and whose body aches for food, or a dog who is licking her wounds from the beating she gets every day, or of a chained dog whose unrelenting loneliness is harder to bear than even hunger or abuse. My fellow rescuers and I are haunted by their suffering. Rescuers are often called obsessed and perhaps that is true. Dog rescue certainly consumes me. It is rare that I will go more than an hour at a time without being involved with one aspect or another of dog rescue. This is true for every rescuer I have ever known. Rescue isn’t something you dabble in; it takes over your life. It is intensely stressful and emotionally and financially draining. But the rewards of watching formerly terrified and traumatized dogs shed their fears and blossom into joyful, confident and loving beings, with little more effort than treating them with the respect and care they have always deserved, makes every tearful, tormented moment worth it. But nothing would please animal rescuers more than not to be needed – to be out of business because there are no more suffering or homeless animals. A society that is as outraged by cruelty to animals as we are is our deepest desire. We would happily take back the lives we had before rescue took them over. I used to garden and sculpt. Since rescue found me, my garden has been lost to buttercup and my kiln is covered in dust. As one animal rescuer aptly stated, “Rescue is losing your mind and finding your soul.”