Lennox

This post is a bit unusual for me as I typically try to stay away from controversial topics.  I don’t care to start arguments.  But today I’m making an exception; with the potentially controversial topic that is, I still don’t want to start arguments.  I would have posted this last night, but I was at book club, not on Facebook, and so didn’t find out until today.

Any of you who’ve read my blog have probably figured out that I’m a pet person.  A major pet person.  We don’t have human children, and aren’t planning to.  We call the pets our fur kids.  We donate to various animal rescue organizations and volunteer our time as well.  I don’t consider myself to be much of an activist, or a very passionate person, but if I qualify in any area, it would be the way I feel about cats and dogs.  So it probably comes as no surprise that I’ve been following the story of Lennox, the pit bull type dog in Belfast.  You can read more about it here if you’re not familiar.

I was holding out a lot of hope that Cesar Milan’s offer to take Lennox to the U.S. and work with him would be accepted.  I love his show and books, and he has done amazing things with dogs that have been dealt a very bad hand in life.  It seemed like a good solution, but it wasn’t allowed.  Lennox was euthanized yesterday.

From what I’ve read, Lennox’s human family wasn’t permitted to see him to say goodbye.  For any of you who are not pet people this may not seem like a big deal, but as a fur kid mom I can tell you it matters very much.  When you love and care for an animal you form a bond with them.  You need to be able to tell them goodbye whenever and however their end comes.  I cannot imagine being denied this simple human kindness.   I’ll be honest, I’ve spent most of my lunch break crying and hugging Emma just thinking about how those people must be feeling right now.

Breed Specific Legislation is a very sore subject with me, as it is with most people involved in animal rescue.   Outlawing a specific breed isn’t the solution to dog fights, dogs biting humans, or any other dog related issue.  Guess what?  If you do away with pit bulls, people who want to fight dogs will simply begin to use another breed.  Changing people’s behavior is the only solution. 

Any loss of life, be it human or animal, as the direct result of ignorance, bigotry, or fear simply makes me angry.  It’s needless and wasteful. 

My husband and I have long said that our next dog will be a pit bull, rescued of course.  We feel very strongly about that.  They’re typically much harder for shelters to adopt, so we feel that we can do the most good by adopting one whenever we’re in a position to have another dog.  Today, I stand by that even more. 

I’ll end this post with thanking you for “listening” to my little rant (if you’re still here, that is) and applauding you if you’re one of the people working in any way to prevent more stories like this from happening.