please don't tell me how the story ends

I found out that the "no-kill" shelter where I volunteer killed a dog over a year ago, a dog I loved. The people involved in making the decision to kill her deliberately hid their act from me, but that's not what bothers me. It's the unfairness to the dog. And my grief for her. And my grief for myself because all this time I have been harboring hopes that someday I would be able to adopt her.

I met her on the Skokomish Reservation where she was scavanging for food in garbage cans. I was afraid of her at first; I was not familiar with pit bulls or dogs in general. She had a queenly confident air that intimidated me a bit.I have a snapshot of memory of the first time I petted her---I held out my hand for her to sniff and then she stepped under my palm for a pat.  Later, when we got close, she would roll over for tummy tickles  or sit and lick my face.

She wasn't a pretty dog. She had the big blocky head and little floppy ears of a pit but a plume tail and stiff medium legnth fur like a cattle dog. She was midsize and slender. One of her back legs was malformed but it didn't bother her.

I fed her through the winter. One dark evening I found her in my client's garage on a stinky funky horrible old couch. It was raining, a miserable evening. Her face was crisscrossed with lacerations and her paws swollen up.  I got food and water for her and wrapped her in a blanket. She cuddled up to me and lay her head on my lap. I promised her that I would always be her guardian angel.

Please don't tell me how the story ends.

The worst of it is that she was led to her death, after losing her adoptive family, by someone who didn't give a shit about her.  She was grieving and scared when she died. I was not there to be her guardian angel. No one who cared about her was there to comfort her.

I don't love the easy dogs. I find the slutty ones sort of boring. That promiscous "I lub-a-dubba-everybody" type dog does indeed love everyone...equally and easily.  I like a dog that actually prefers me to other people.  That's the kind of dog Lassie was: the kind that invests heart and soul in her people to the exclusion of all else.  And her people betrayed her. Everyone betrayed her.

It took about a week of serious work for me to get to the point where I could write a letter to the kennelmaster about Lassie's death. I wanted to hurt the people who killed her. I wanted to stomp off in a huff and never go to the rescue again. I wanted to tell the world that a no-kill shelter had, without thought, almost on impulse, killed a dog. I wanted revenge.

But I also wanted to stay involved. I love being involved in dog rescue. Also I am trying to be a good Buddhist and that means not being hateful to people no matter how much they might deserve it. 

Besides they might not deserve to be treated hatefully. People make mistakes. I do all the time.

I did write a letter to the kennel master and I did tell her how wrong the decision to kill Lassie was, how unfair to her. But I was very careful to stay away from anger. The tone of the letter was sad, not hurtful.

Turns out the kenelmaster agrees with me. She's had a bad conscience about that decision for over a year. She said that she had prayed to God many times for forgiveness. She asked if I would forgive her.

It's not for me to forgive. Our kennel master is a wonderful, dedicated person who has saved literally thousands of dogs over the years. She makes many, many decisions and can't be expected to make every decision right. I just want the rescue to review its euthanasia policy to make it harder for this sort of rush to judgement to happen again.  That's what the rescue can do to atone.

Good by, Lassie.

For you, I make this promise: I will finish my  novel and publish it. I will meditate every day and try to be a good Buddhist. And my next dog will be a hard -to- place dog, a pit or a black dog or a handicapped dog, a dog no one else wants. I promise you that and I promise that I will be my new dogs guardian angle no matter what.