… and my Last Words via everyman.ca
[c] Davd, 2020, from a draft begun 2012
In December 2005, i drove across Canada, from West Vancouver Island to Eastern New Brunswick, to keep faith with an old Spitz-Wolf dog who had served me well and loyally. It was neither an easy nor a totally safe trip; but my friend George [the half-Wolf “dog”—or in my eyes, the canine-Métis] deserved such loyalty; for such was the loyalty he had given me and my son Erik. As we stopped for rest, i would say to him, “I’m glad you’re here, George”—and it was the simple truth. We had two more good years together.
His last remains were buried next an apple tree in my prayer garden, as they should be; and when he finally had to be “put down”, i held his paw and stroked his head until he had lost consciousness for a full minute—and then wept because of my inability to do better, to give him some more good years.
Having read those two paragraphs, you can see why the [2011?] story of the murder of 100 Huskies got my attention and anger, as worse than a crazy or foolish human killing one or two human strangers, not merely in the numbers who died but in the evil of the killing. Few if any people who are killed in traffic, or sports, are killed deliberately. Those Huskies were.
Beyond innocence, those dogs were loyal servants—slaves in law—who had given fidelity and trust to the people for whom they worked. It is one thing to kill a porcupine who girdles your trees, chews your harness, and threatens your livestock; it is quite another to kill 100 loyal servants.
This was not merely “cruelty to animals”; fleas and slugs and sharks are animals too. This was mortal cruelty to social, affectionate, cooperative, thinking beings of our own size and style, who gave the best years of their young adult lives to serving those who murdered them. My Christian faith acknowledges that we as humans have dominion over other creatures—but as stewards serving their and our Creator, not for to treat them with any disrespect, much less cruelty, and never evil.
As stewards, those responsible for the dogs could have “got word out” over the radio, telephone, and Internet, if they felt they had to reduce the number of their dogs; and they could easily have reached tens of thousands, probably millions of Canadians.1 If retired racing greyhounds can find adoptive homes, then surely the more “regular-looking” Huskies could find them also; and among a million people2, 100 adopters would be only one hundredth of one percent.
Not just the worker who felt cornered into the actual killing, and failed to do better than obey an evil “order”; but even more, those who failed to provide him with the means to give the dogs good care, and also failed to provide the means to “adopt some dogs out”, should be shown, for all who will look, to see; to have acted in ways unworthy of human beings. Having so acted, they have forfeit some “human moral rights”, just as criminals in prison have3. In response, we as human beings who are not perfect but neither evil, should show forth:
Revulsion: One wee short step shy of revenge, we should make plain that this act was a shame upon all our humanity and one we reject as not merely inhumane but inhuman. It is inhumane to deny an active dog exercise or underfeed any animal; mass-killing of friendly, social animals is much worse than that.
Shaming: It should be plain that they have done evil—something that can not be quickly forgotten, but must be repented and “lived down”. I am reminded of the practice, two centuries ago in the first United States, of making thieves wear a large T for all to see, adulterers an A (and was there also a G for gossip?)
Deterrence: Whatever we can do to the perpetrators of this evil, that deters others from doing its like, has merit. It may be that some things we might do also have severe “demerits”—it is not good to answer evil with evil—and so, we must perhaps think a while to find responses that are most fitting.
Locking people up in prisons is expensive and does not seem to be very effective in causing them to change their ways. More than getting tough” on these killers, we should protect others from them, provide them with situational encouragement to change their ways, deter others from imitating them, and show our revulsion. I am thinking of Siberia more than early Australia4.
The fact they were men is a shame on our male sex. We should acknowledge that shame — and in so acknowledging, we will have an honest stance when women’s evils merit shame. There are men who fall short and, significantly worse, there are men who do evil. Men who do evil should not be “let off” because they are men — nor should women who do evil be “let off” because they are women.
We cannot undo the murders; I cannot choose a mate for Fritz from among them; i cannot go now to my neighbours and send messages to my more distant friends, to ask who they know that might want a Husky dog in their households, for little or no cost. We all must carry this damage on our spirits5, and no amount of pain laid on those who caused it, will change the past.
How shall we remember these victims? How shall we honour them, whose canine kind has truly been called “man’s best friend”? Caging evildoers does not give my spirit peace; its best merit is that while caged, they cannot do more of that particular evil. How can we do better than that?
Many days walk to the south, the Choctaw refused to imprison their people: They considered the death penalty more humane than life in prison; and they also used the whip and “amends”6 as punishment for lesser crimes. Those punishments acknowledged that they could not fully “make things right”.
Labelling is one way to protect the public: “Dangerous offender” laws and the registration of sex offenders serve much more to warn the police and public than to influence the offender; and knowing that these designations exist may deter some potential offenders as well. Whip marks are labelling of a kind; but perhaps answering violent evil with more violence is not that likely to help, over-all, especially compared with other ways to label.
If i were in a sentencing-circle i believe i would urge that the perpetrators be branded somehow—probably by means of a tattoo. This might restrict their future opportunities, much as a “dangerous offender” or “registered sex-offender” designation does. It is a sign of past wrongdoing that can perhaps be lived-down; and as such, if they do repent, do mend their ways, then they could be accepted where their mended ways are known. Since conduct is to some extent situational, restricting the guilty to circumstances where they have been able to “live it down” might be some protection against their reverting to evil in a different setting.
Branding—not to cause pain but to shame and to warn the public—is perhaps the best suggestion i can now offer. I hope other people, i suppose Christians and Muslims and Buddhists especially, will have others, that further improve on caging those who have done wrong. I thought of putting the offenders in the pillory or the stocks for animal-lovers to pelt them with disgusting things, of making them pull the sleds—but those are more like bad comedy than like righteousness.
Let us honour those massacred good servants with a serious, moral review of crime and punishment—and of deterrence and reform and the philosophy behind laws and their enforcement. Having read some collected sayings of Muhammad; and in earlier years having spoken with a few Buddhist friends, one Baha’i elder, and one Muslim friend; i have no great worries that good Christian reconsideration will conflict “essentially” with their faiths. I hope to read their reviews as well as ours.
To me, this killing is far worse than stealing a million dollars, which is mere money; or driving while intoxicated, which might increase risk to others but is not the intentional murder of loyal friends — or even killing a human scoundrel. If thieves and impaired drivers can go to prison, is that because prison is a lazy-minded way of throwing public tax money after private loss and public risk? and catering to the folly of vengeance? Is it because we are afraid to recognize our inability to change the past and truly “make things right”?
The truth, my Master taught, will set us free. To live a lie, conversely, will entangle us in folly and very possibly evil. Not only are the victims of this mass killing morally superior to those who killed them; there is a sense in which they are superior to us all if we do not honour their memory by an examination of the human condition, both inherent and socially learned. We need name and confess our flaws of nature, to work around them; and our flaws of social conditioning, to change what “taught” them. In the process we may find that vengeance and hubris, not even crackpot righteousness [and infinitely far from the real thing], has made our so-called correctional system into something that all-too-often does the opposite of correcting.
We may find that we have written into law, things we cannot do and promises we cannot keep; and we may have to settle for a smaller reality before a large illusion fails us more than it already has.
This is my last blog post on everyman.ca. I have held this particular moral statement for last, to reiterate our human nature as pack animals, our ethological kinship with canines7, the many ways we are better off in canine company than without it; our moral failings which like our power, probably be greater than theirs.
Huskies, i grieve again—I have lost count how many times—because i had no chance to help you find new homes. George, please comfort them for me; and may i be worthy to walk the trails of Paradise with you all.
Notes:
1. I am not opposed to letting US Citizens adopt Canadian dogs who haven’t quickly found Canadian households; but the Border and its rules might make the process both slow and costly, even compared to getting some dogs transported fairly long distances. At the time of the killings there was no pandemic to frustrate shipping dogs in suitable cages, perhaps even specialized trucks.
2. Fewer than live in Coastal B.C.
3 … unless since the killing, one or more of them has shown repentance, and the fruits of repentance. It will have to be great repentance with substantial fruits, to qualify.
4… and a footnote should perhaps acknowledge, that many who were sent to Siberia were less guilty in the moral perspectives I share, than those who sent them. It should perhaps acknowledge also, that a few of those in North American prisons are there by error; it is the wrongdoing and not being in prison that forfeits moral rights.
5… as, I agree with the BBC, the French state and people carry some damage on theirs. BBC reports,
“Between 100,000 and 200,000 pets are abandoned in France each year …. By comparison, the RSPCA animal charity told the BBC that the figure is close to 16,000 in the UK.”
6. The French word “amends” is less ambiguous than the English word “fine”; and the amends need not be made in money … but likely, sometimes will be.
Might the cost of dog rescue, and not only in France, be funded by a tax on commercial sale of dogs at boutique sorts of places where impulse purchases are made? Those who cannot or will not pay the tax, could give home to an abandoned animal and perhaps do some volunteer work at the shelter.
I find it very difficult to envision anyone abandoning a dog, or even a cat, who knows personally the humans in whose household that animal was born. There seems scant need to tax personal sources of “pets”.
7… and especially with regular ones whose wolf ancestry is apparent in their anatomy, including size as well as shape.
