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Dawn Ashby, DDB Public Liaison Director

Chained in Chicago, 24 Hours, June 27-28

 

The quiet click of the chain as I fastened it to my red leather collar was the last sound of freedom I would know for 24 hours.  The collar would rub into my flesh all night long leaving welts that would turn into bruises. I chose the heaviest dog box…I say box, because it’s not a house, just a wooden box that Lincoln the Bar Dog was chained to inside a tiny cul-de-sac where sunbeams never found a place to call home. Strewn with broken beer bottles from the long nights of torment, Lincoln, the black lab lay in this very box for a year until that faithful day when a cleaning lady would call me and profess that yes, Lincoln did deserve much better than this.

So here I sat leaning against Lincoln’s dog box as Lincoln is miles away living and loving his life with his new forever family; my freedom for his.  It’s not enough to bring a speck of peace to my heart because there is always another waiting for rescue and I want to save that one.  I have limitations and I hate them as much as I hate the apathy that surrounds the constant chaining of dogs.

My husband raced up to tell me a storm is about to roll in.  I can see the dark clouds forming in the distance.  The vendors have packed up their wears in the knick of time. Suddenly, with the sun still shining my daughter Michelle runs to me with an umbrella. She announces, “This rain hurts!” just as everyone else seeks shelter realizing it’s not rain, but hail pounding down upon us. I hunkered in the dog box with Heidi, a rescue that would be adopted before the end of the night.

At home I had been reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin as I am forever finding truths lying between the covers of books concerning the suffering of others.  One thing is certain, no matter what the argument the excuses are always the same; excuses of oppressors trying to keep control of the oppressed. Whether it is a husband proclaiming that his wife didn’t want to vote or work, that she was happy taking care of the house or that slaves don’t want to be free because they have everything they could want under the care of the slaveholders. These defenses echo in my head as I am reminded of the statements of dog chainers saying, “My dog is happy on the end of a chain.” Trust me, I’ve been there, the dogs are not happy.

To my left sat a friend on a chain attached to a doghouse that provided the only shelter for a lab some 15 years of his life.  I tried to imagine the ghost dog forever chained and decided like Uncle Tom, his spirit was elsewhere running free as the wind in a place where no dogs suffer on the end of a chain or are unloved. I tried to find solace in the fact that the dog’s caretakers no longer chained any more dogs, the one they have now lives in the house due to the education of Dogs Deserve Better.

I am blatantly crying for attention.  “Do you see me?  Don’t just see me on the end of this chain start seeing them! Start seeing chained dogs! They are everywhere and they are suffering!” They don’t suffer for minutes, or hours, but day after day with no end in sight.  There are no walks, there are not friendly pats on the head, and there is nothing but constant boredom and territorial pacing.    What do you see when you look at me chained?  A woman who must really love dogs? I’m not.  My dream is to spend my time with my family and my own dogs instead of taking in all the others. I don’t love dogs as much as I hate suffering.  My dream is for people to take good care of their own pets. 

The afternoon wiles away and the crowd of friends and admirers dissipate as evening rolls around.  Light rain is here and there.  My friends are with me as is my family; for a while.  Tammy Grimes is at the head of all.  She alone has the passion and strength to hold everything together.  She knows what it is to be persecuted for her beliefs, yet she holds fast to her convictions.  We know that right will prevail in the end and that we can’t lie down and let abusers win, ever.  The harder they push the stronger we stand. They can’t break us, our hearts are not theirs to conquer; our hearts already belong to the backyard dogs.

As day turns to night a light mist spreads through the air, I take a bathroom break, there are restrooms behind the old grandstand on the fairgrounds.  As I’m leaving the restroom in comes a steady, pounding rain.  I’m reluctant to leave the solid covering of the bathroom, but I don’t want to be off the chain for more than a few minutes.  I want to be fair to the dogs that never get a break. 

When I arrived back at my doghouse, everyone was sleeping or holed up in their own doghouses.  I abandoned Lincoln’s dog box and moved to one with a little more coverage.  I was cold, wet and felt as if the night would never end. 

The next morning the sun rose to reveal a ground littered with wet, irritated people, still on the end of chains.  Tammy has paper towels flying everywhere. In the middle of the night on her bathroom break she searched the grounds for cover and came up with only a roll of brown paper towels.  Desperate times call for desperate measures!  Rhonda Sims, our Southern Gem is next to me and in her Southern accent she says, “We went through hail for the dogs.”  The pun was intended.  Little Jen, our Indiana friend was twisted like a question mark, sleeping in an Igloo and Kim; she braved the storm all night long; the others, each and every one of them unbearably beaten by the night’s events.  Some were chained too far away from me to get a good look at them, but I know they had to be warn-down. There was Gordon, my good friend and idol, always the trooper, wrapped in a tarp while sleeping on the wet ground.

My throat was aching and my ears and head felt stuffed. Feeling safer with all my comrades awake I crawled back into my doghouse to catch up on some sleep.  When I awoke I could hear laughter outside.  Oh Lord, Tammy’s talking about snoring…  Did someone mention a cow?  I decided to sit tight for a bit…if I was snoring and I’m really quiet now maybe they’d forget about it by the time I came out. When the conversation turned to something else, I came out of my doghouse.  Tammy is there, laughing about interviewing me while I was snoring.   My flight factor gone because of my chain I was forced to face my nemesis and fight.  “You are all a bunch of mean dogs!” I said.  I was still sleepy, my eyes all puffy and what does Tammy do? She sticks that darn camera on me again!

Where was Susan with the coffee she promised us?  We could all have used a nice warm cup of coffee.  Oh well, our family and friends start to arrive and Susan! Oops! Forgot the coffee! It’s ok; it’s time to take off our chains. With a hooray and a single click it’s over! Now if we could only do that for every dog in every backyard, with a hooray and click…the world would be a much kinder place to live.