Becoming Worthy of Their Forgiveness and Practicing Peace

Chance and Mabel say "Happy holidays." And "Would you eat, wear, experiment on, or for other reasons abuse or kill us? We didn't think so. Let's chat."

The snow is falling quickly outside my office window. The dogs are curled up on either side of me in crates, still recovering from and/or preparing for surgeries (it’s been a hard month around here). We–the dogs and I–are hunkering down for a quiet holiday, of work and bills and reflection and Kong-chewing, at the close of a year that has been difficult for all of us. There are simple decorations around us, and I whispered a “Happy Solstice; let’s hope things start getting better now” to the dogs the other day. But mostly, this day and tomorrow will be like any other day for us. It will be just the three of us this weekend except for a couple hours in which I see family tomorrow night.

And maybe because they are, for the bulk of the holidays, my sole company and because ’tis the season for such things, I have in recent days found myself thinking much of the concepts of forgiveness, peace, faith, and new beginnings in relation to both these two dogs and all other animals beyond the category of human.

Both of my four-legged family members came to me from painful pasts and fell into the “less adoptable” category for various reasons. Both were abandoned and neglected. One was certainly abused and is haunted by that every day. The other, years ago, surprised me with signs that she may have been physically abused at some point too.

But each has gifted me with her trust. Each has grown more independent, more confident, since her first night in my care. Both Chance six years ago and Mabel two and a half years ago, afraid and with a history of betrayal and abandonment, did the same thing their first nights with me, though otherwise those entries into my life were very different: they both did their best to sleep not just near me, but on top of me, as if I otherwise might try to escape, as if this was their way of making sure they’d know it if I tried to move and leave them.

Chance is far more independent than she used to be, but as I have learned since having to impose crate confinement on her (we’re probably looking at another one of these surgeries), her fear of my leaving her is still very real; I just don’t see it when she’s free to move–and follow me–wherever she wishes.

And Mabel, though she still would gladly sleep halfway on top of me every night if I let her–and though she continues to be convinced that she can and should fit on a person’s lap–is confident enough in my steadfastness that she will not join Chance in sprawling out on hard floors just to be near me when I’m in a room without soft spots. She’ll take the comfy bed in the next room, thank you very much. Mabel is still afraid of the world outside this house most days, but she is getting better every month. There have been tearful, for me, moments recently when while watching her, I’ve witnessed curiosity outweigh fear in circumstances that two years ago would have terrified her beyond coping. And there are now humans other than me whom she not only likes but even trusts and loves, upon whose arrival at the house she turns into an uncontrollably excited puppy. “I have friends! I have friends!”

See, Mabel does not bark at you because she wants to hurt you. She barks at you because she fears you but does not want to. She barks at you because she wants to trust you despite what humans did to her, and she wants you to give her a reason to trust. She barks at you because she is testing you, because what she wants more than anything is for you to let her lick your face and rest her head on your shoulder, but she needs to know that if she tries to, you won’t hit her in the face with your fist or kick her in the side.

And Chance barks when she can’t see me not because she’s spoiled, not because she’s a brat. She barks at me–for me–in panic because she fears, even after six years, that I won’t come back. They left her tied to a tree and neglected for the first half of her life. And then they dropped her off at a cold shelter. And then someone adopted her…and returned her. And then someone adopted her…and returned her. That was her life for seven and a half years. She did her time tied up. She did her time in cages. When I am here, she needs to follow me, to at least be able to see me, to know that I am still here, that I am not trying to leave her. When I do leave the house, she needs to be able to sit at the door or the gate, unconfined, able to watch for me to return, able to jump up when I walk back in. She is not needy, but afraid–of that cage that traps her like she was trapped for too long, of the possibility of abandonment by someone she trusts after the same happened to her so many times.

Yet even with all these lingering fears and all these ghosts that haunt them and all the damage they must work every day to negotiate, ultimately and overall, they trust. And they forgive. And they love. They have every reason not to, but they nevertheless do trust and love and keep trying to trust more.

Like the pig at the sanctuary who vulnerably gives you his belly to rub, even though someone who looked like you cut out his teeth, chopped off his tail, kicked him around, brutally killed his companions when they were babies and adolescents, for something called “bacon.”

Like the hen who lived a nightmare from the moment she emerged from an egg but who leans into the warmth of her rescuer and week by week and month by month learns to trust her freedom and safety and the ground under her feet and to accept and return the affections of the same kinds of beings who until now have caused her nothing but pain, in the name of eggs and “chicken” and “turkey.”

Like the roosters and the dogs who were forced and manipulated, beyond their nature, to fear and hate and hurt those like them but who with care and patience may learn to trust and coexist with and sometimes even love those they were taught to kill, like the elephants who were mentally tormented and physically beaten in circuses but who find a way to trust and experience joy again in sanctuary, in proximity to the same species that brutalized them, in the name of “entertainment.”

Like the cow who is haunted by the unspeakable things that humans did to her, by the memory of the crying, stumbling babies they tore away from her while she howled and struggled, year after year after year, who physically and emotionally was so abused and exploited, but who takes comfort in being surrounded by her own kind in safe spaces and who, year after year, comes a little bit closer to trusting the ones she can’t be sure won’t hurt her, in the name of “dairy.”

Like all the many animals in sanctuaries who form loving, peaceful bonds with us and with each other, within and across species, despite how insistently the world–and we–once beat them down.

These few, so painfully few, animals who escape the brutal circumstances in which we, their fellow animals, put them: they are our proof of what all animals–all, not just dogs or other animals we arbitrarily elevate above others–are capable of. We know, by witnessing them and their personalities, their emotions, their relationships with each other, and their development and healing, the clearly deep feelings and experiences of which they are capable. And in these animals–these not-human animals–we get to see love and forgiveness and faith and new beginnings embodied. They seek and create and accept peace and love and forgiveness in a world that has been anything but peaceful and loving toward them.

And in seasons such as this one, they, just like all the other beings on this planet, do not belong in concrete shelters, in stockyards, in warehouses, in laboratories, on slaughterhouse floors, or dead on kitchen tables, while the people picking the flesh off their bones or drinking dairy- and egg-based nog, for which their babies were killed and their brothers ground alive, celebrate and wish for “peace,” or while humans speak of “love” and “family” as they give each other gloves made from the skin of babies cut out of their slaughtered mothers or sweaters constructed from the suffering of sheep.

It is not too late this year to really choose peace and nonviolence, to replace the violence of meat and dairy and eggs with vegan meals. To go to a shelter and adopt an animal or begin fostering for a no-kill rescue (list not comprehensive; do a search for your community). To talk to people about what we know, even when it’s hard, even when they don’t want to hear it.

Sometimes people comment that the holidays must be more tempting than other times–that is, vegans must feel like they are missing out. Do I, during these holidays filled for most people with travel and family and massive amounts of once-loved so-called foods–roasted bodies, milk chocolate-filled treats–regret either my commitment to aiming for nonviolence, to veganism, or my “choosing” to take in Mabel, with all the restrictions on life and travel that have come with her, even more so with life developments this year?

Absolutely not. During times when there is so much talk of peace, giving, love, forgiveness, and new beginnings, I am more sure than ever of the choices I have made and continue to make. And I know that so many others who are doing their best to live nonviolently, consistently, and justly feel the same way.

Please, if you’re looking for ways to live more lovingly, more peacefully, more honestly, more justly in the new year too, look at the food on your plate, look at the clothes on your body and the shoes on your feet, look at the products in your closets, look at the never-ending lists of animals languishing in cages or on the streets, and consider that these are the places to start.

If the few who escape our systems can forgive us after all we have done to them and after all they have seen us do to their mothers and children and companions, if they can love and accept love after all we put them through, surely we can do our best to stop putting them and other animals through such suffering and injustice and brutal deaths in the first place.

As our friends at L.O.V.E. put it earlier this year, you can help stop this.

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Links in this post:

• “Walle’s Shadow”
• “A Cow’s Milk Is Not Yours to Take”
• “The Stare of Sadie”
• “Mabel and Choosing Who Lives”
• “Peace on Earth–for Pigs and Those Like Them”
• “Dairy, Pregnancy, Leather, and Newborns: What Are You Funding?”
• Peaceable Journey: Taking steps toward a life of joyful co-existence
• YouCanHelpStopThis.com
• No-Kill Shelter Directory