They were at the door. Her little dog was growling softly. She tried to hush the sound. She knew what they wanted. She felt as though her heart was being ripped from her chest. She had managed to hide her little friend for years. She shared her food and bed with her. She had bought her on the black market. It had cost her dearly but it was worth it.
She had been so alone. Nothing to love her or for her to love in return. Her children had grown up and forgotten her. Her husband had died two years before she found Sweetie. Sweetie had been a tiny black and tan ball of fur showing her Yorkshire Terrier background. Of course, she knew that Sweetie could not been purebred. There had been no purebred dogs for years. There were few dogs since the breeders had been slowly and methodically beaten down.
When this first started, everyone sat back and said they could not possibly be the breeders they were talking about. After all, they loved their dogs and they were not puppy mills. They would never let themselves be overloaded with dogs. Some of them did not get overloaded nor did they breed more than a litter or two a year. They were smug and secure in that only the puppy mills were being raided.
The raids were relentless. They would take place in one state then another. The dog raiders got smarter with every raid. They learned about warrants, the court system, the law in different states and they used whatever means they could to eliminate the breeders of dogs. Some people thought the raiders were dog lovers trying to save the poor mistreated puppies. Some of them were dog lovers, at first. The well-meaning rescue groups were used. The American Kennel Club was used. They would revoke the rights of the breeder who was raided. Kennel clubs were infiltrated and destroyed from within. The very fiber of the dog world was silently unraveled one string at a time.
Everyone would rise to arms against every breeder raided. Saying things like that terrible person mistreated those poor dogs; that person had too many dogs; and that person is crazy. If the truth were not provoking enough they would lie and say that person should die. They campaigned by e-mail, petitioned the courts, and used political pull. Even when common sense would tell them that they did not know the facts or circumstances, they persist. They would see fat happy tail wagging dogs and would say abused dogs. They no longer believed their own eyes. The dogs tried to tell the truth but no one could hear them.
True, there were cases of abuse, beaten, starved, and sick animals, at first. Then the tide shifted. Good honest dog loving people started to being raided. Any reason was used. Dogs were taken and the owners refused rights to reclaim their dogs. The raiders started to narrow the number of dogs which were in violation. Any person with a dog became a target. Dog grooming became a thing of the past. Veterinarian services were performed out of back room under the dark of night until there were no veterinarians. Dog shows had long disappeared along with the American Kennel Club. Children were told tales of the days when every boy had a dog to run with through fields. The stories of “ Old Shep”,” O’Yeller”, “Call of the Wild”,” Lassie” and all those wonderful stories which would bring tears to the eyes of grown men were being forgotten except by a few.
But she remembered as a little girl the small dog who loved her, followed her everywhere, and gave her comfort like no one on earth could give. She just had to find her that special warmth, the grateful lick-kiss, something that loved her unconditional and a reason for getting up in the morning. She found Sweetie.
Now they were at her door to take the life that she cherished. The warm little black and tan 3- pound body that loved her as much as she loved it. And there was no one to stop them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~The old lady with the last dog on earth.
1. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is a “humane society” in name only, since it doesn’t operate a single pet shelter or pet adoption facility anywhere in the United States. HSUS operates sanctuaries for large animals only, not shelters within the commonly accepted definition of shelter. During 2006, HSUS contributed only 4.2 percent of its budget to organizations that operate hands-on dog and cat shelters. In reality, HSUS is a wealthy animal-rights lobbying organization (the largest and richest on earth) that agitates for the same goals as PETA and other radical groups.
2. Beginning on the day of NFL quarterback Michael Vick’s2007 dog fighting indictment, HSUS raised money online with the false promise that it would “care for the dogs seized in the Michael Vick case.” The New York Times later reported that HSUS wasn’t caring for Vick’s dogs at all. And HSUS president Wayne Pacelle told the Times that his group recommended that government officials “put down” (that is, kill) the dogs rather than adopt them out to suitable homes. HSUS later quietly altered its Internet fundraising pitch.
3. HSUS’s senior management includes a former spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a criminal group designated as “terrorists” by the FBI. HSUS president Wayne Pacelle hired John “J.P.” Goodwin in 1997, the same year Goodwin described himself as “spokesperson for the ALF” while he fielded media calls in the wake of an ALF arson attack at a California veal processing plant. In 1997, when asked by reporters for a reaction to an ALF arson fire at a farmer’s feed co-op in Utah (which nearly killed a family sleeping on the premises), Goodwin replied, “We’re ecstatic.” That same year, Goodwin was arrested at a UC Davis protest celebrating the 10-year anniversary of an ALF arson at the university that caused $5 million in damage. And in 1998, Goodwin described himself publicly as a “former member of ALF.”
4.HSUS raised a reported $34 million in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, supposedly to help reunite lost pets with their owners. But comparatively little of that money was spent for its intended purpose. Louisiana’s Attorney General shuttered his 18-month-long investigation into where most of these millions went, shortly after HSUS announced its plan to contribute $600,000 toward the construction of an animal shelter on the grounds of a state prison. Public disclosures of the disposition of the $34 million in Katrina-related donations add up to less than $7 million.
5. After gathering undercover video footage of improper animal handling at a Chino, CA slaughterhouse during November of 2007, HSUS sat on its video evidence for three months, even refusing to share it with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. HSUS’s Dr. Michael Greger testified before Congress that the San Bernardino County (CA) District Attorney’s office asked the group “to hold on to the information while they completed their investigation.” But the District Attorney’s office quickly denied that account, even declaring that HSUS refused to make its undercover spy available to investigators if the USDA were present at those meetings. Ultimately, HSUS chose to release its video footage at a more politically opportune time, as it prepared to launch a livestock-related ballot campaign in California. Meanwhile, meat from the slaughterhouse continued to flow into the U.S. food supply for months.
6. According to a 2008 Los Angeles Times investigation, less than 12 percent of money raised for HSUS by California telemarketers actually ends up in HSUS’s bank account. The rest is kept by professional fundraisers. And if you exclude two campaigns run for HSUS by the “Build-a-Bear Workshop” retail chain, which consisted of the sale of surplus stuffed animals (not really “fundraising”), HSUS’s yield number shrinks to just 3 percent. Sadly, this appears typical. In 2004, HSUS ran a telemarketing campaign in Connecticut with fundraisers who promised to return a minimum of zero percent of the proceeds. The campaign raised over $1.4 million. Not only did absolutely none of that money go to HSUS, but the group paid $175,000 for the telemarketing work.
7. Research shows that HSUS’s heavily promoted U.S. “boycott” of Canadian seafood—announced in 2005 as a protest against Canada’s annual seal hunt—is a phony exercise in media manipulation. A 2006 investigation found that 78 percent of the restaurants and seafood distributors described by HSUS as “boycotters” weren’t participating at all. Nearly two-thirds of them told surveyors they were completely unaware HSUS was using their names in connection with an international boycott campaign. Canada’s federal government is on record about this deception, saying: “Some animal rights groups have been misleading the public for years … it’s no surprise at all that the richest of them would mislead the public with a phony seafood boycott.”
HSUS is an animal rights group which believes animals should have the same rights as people (erasing the line between people, pets, and livestock and between animal welfare and animal rights), promoting vegetarian/veganism, stopping animal agriculture, and banning animals like cats and dogs from being owned as pets. YES, it's true!
