Why Are the Dogs In Cages Instead of The People Who Hurt Them?

I'm angry tonight, angry at a world where people can abuse animals and get away with it.

We went to see Mellifer/Amy/Nancy/Cupcake tonight, the dog I met the other day and who I was hoping could become part of our family.

"Someone's beaten the hell out of her," I'd been told. "She's been impossible to place."

She was wonderful once we got her out of the cage and outside that first visit; sweet, friendly, clearly interested in getting a human of her own.

But I'd been warned she was fearful of men. KB and I went tonight, hoping that perhaps she'd sense that he'd never hurt anyone.

She greeted him with a growl. She was afraid, despite the cookies in his pocket, his soft voice, his effort to be non-threatening.

It didn't get better. He tried. He gave her space. But the minute he turned his attention toward her, she growled. At one point, she lunged.

"This isn't going to work," the woman who clearly likes her and wanted her to go home with us tonight admitted.

This isn't a mean dog. She's afraid. And unfortunately, she shows her fear with aggression. For someone comfortable with dogs, who understand them, she's worth the work she'll require. But for us, with one of us never having owned a dog and just not sure what to do or how to act, it's a disaster waiting to happen.

We had to leave her there.

"Someone else called about her, too," we were told. "Maybe it'll work out."

I've adopted dogs before, dogs who'd been abused and mistreated. And it always breaks my heart, because the dogs are so willing to forgive, so basically kind and bewildered. And it's even sadder when a badly treated dog turns fearful; it makes it that much harder to find them the loving home they so desperately want and need.

I hope Mellifer/Melissa/Melinda/Melanie finds one. I wish it could have been ours.

Peaceable Kingdom Is Coming - Pass It On

Did you see the climate change issue differently after watching Al Gore's
"An Inconvenient Truth"? Then you are the audience for a new film that's about to be released by NY-based filmmakers Tribe of Heart.

It's a movie that will change the way you see farm animals. I saw it as part of their pre-release audience testing. It is called "Peaceable Kingdom, The Journey Home".

Filmmakers Jenny Stein and James LaVeck have made a powerful film on a controversial issue, but they've kept a compassionate touch. Rather than strident demands for change, they've focused the film on livestock farmers whose own lives transformed when they began to question what they were doing. The answers to those questions haven't been easy, and their conclusions have cost them friendships and a great deal of money. But those answers have also created amazing relationships with animals they once considered food. The softening of their hearts is reflected in their faces.

Tribe of Heart goes to farm animal sanctuaries and introduces us to farm animals in a way many of us have never experienced. Once you've gotten to know them, it is impossible to believe they are any less individual, sentient creatures than the pets we love.

There is inescapable evidence that our factory farm, mass produced food system is dangerous. The latest recall involves the most benign food of all - cookie dough. Tribe of Heart goes behind the scenes, showing the creatures at those farms, showing the conditions in which they live and the way they die. These are tough scenes to watch, but open your own heart. Realize that what you eat, what you ate at your last meal, came from those conditions. Be brave enough to see where that food that's presented so neatly wrapped at your cavernous grocery store really comes from. If it raises questions in your own mind - all the better.

Open yourself to the possibility of change. "Peaceable Kingdom - The Journey Home" is a great first step.

Why Do Humans Suck So Much?

I'm about ready to give up. Seriously. We've got Bernie Madoff and his Limitless Greed, Hank Paulson and his Tunnel Vision, George Bush, who doesn't seem to notice anything except a shoe winging toward his head. We've got Republicans, we've got Democrats, we've got liberals and conservatives. We have, in my opinion, a really stupid collection of beings that call themselves Americans. And every day I seem to find out that our cruelty, selfishness and sense of entitlement is bigger than I thought.

I was collapsed on the couch last night, soaking in the usually-harmless drug of television entertainment. But there was a show on chimpanzees that I came in on about halfway through. It was Nature's 25th anniversary special: "Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History". These were chimps that have been in advertising, in the movies, in the circus. They've been pets. They've been prisoners in medical labs. And they're now in chimp sanctuaries.
The show ended with the release of some of the chimps into a new island - a place where they could wander with no bars between them and the sky. One ailing chimp couldn't bring himself to step onto the grass. Concrete was all he'd ever known. And one aging chimp immediately clambered up a tree and stayed there.

That was enough to rip my heart, but I found something else was even worse. At one point, the man who'd raised two of the now-rescued chimps was found and invited to come visit the animals. He'd had to give them up and they'd been sold, bred and sent to labs. It had been twenty years since they'd ridden in his car or had an ice cream.

"No way will they remember me," he said as they walked toward the cages. "I don't even remember people after twenty years."

But they did. Their joy in hearing his voice was unmistakable. They let down their guard and behaved in ways the staff had never seen. And I fell apart.

Our arrogance and our biblical belief that all creatures are here to serve us has turned us into monsters. We imprison animals and torture them to make sure our mascara won't make our eyes sting. We enslave creatures for our own trivial wants as well as our medical needs. We even eat them. And they know what is going on.

When my kids were young they helped raise two dairy cows for 4H. And long after they'd given up 4H and moved on to other hobbies, they went back to that farm. When they called their cows' names, those cows came running. They know. Don't tell me how smart animals are or aren't - they're aware. And we act like we don't know.

Just when I think I'm aware of all the rotten things we do, I get slapped in the face with one I'd never considered. We'd better hope there is no heaven and no hell, because what we as a species and particularly as a nation are doing is unforgivable.