The Comfort We Provide, the Compassion We Withhold
They are images and sounds I’ve been trying to shake for the two weeks since I awoke to the scene at dawn—the sight of legs splaying out, body collapsing; the sounds of nails racing against and body hitting hard bamboo floor; panicked attempts and failures repeating again and again as I rushed out of bed to stop her, calm her, hold her. The doctors who had run the two days of tests the week before and determined that surgery was too risky this second time had warned me to prepare for possible incontinence down the line, but paralysis was not as likely, they thought, despite what hind-leg symptoms she was showing. This was not supposed to be happening, at least not yet.
My breathing was as rapid as hers as I carried her outside, as I held her body upright long enough for her to pee. Her eyes were fearful; my face was wet. She couldn’t take even a step, and when she tried and splayed and bottomed out, tried and splayed and bottomed out, flailing, it was a new and terrifying and yet, as I’ll explain in a moment, familiar sight. As afraid as I’ve been in a long time, I cried and held her close through much of that day, even as she slowly, intermittently recovered the ability to walk as the day progressed.
Two weeks later, though it’s impossible to predict when she might suddenly worsen again, she is walking almost normally most of the time, always on a leash and with a sling underneath her just in case, but I still can’t shake the image, or rather, the images—plural because in those horrible moments and whenever I’ve remembered them or had to describe them to someone, I haven’t seen just Chance: She was collapsing and panicking with the same desperate movements of a “spent” dairy cow being dragged from the transport truck to the slaughterhouse. She was an unsteady newborn dairy-veal calf being forced to the auction floor. She was a crippled pig desperately trying to escape with the body that people have decided isn’t her own.
She was so scared, this dog, her body betraying her, that as we sat in a vet office a few hours later, she leaned into me instead of struggling to get loose when I lifted her 42-pound body from the floor and held her curled-up body in a lap not really big enough to hold her.
And every time I think of that moment and the others, I think of all those other animals too, those countless other animals, experiencing those same (and far greater) levels of fear and pain and panic every day, but with no comfort, no reprieve, no help, with nothing ahead of them but an electric prod to the body, a shot to the head, a knife to the throat, and quite possibly even the experience of being scalded, skinned, chopped alive. And unlike Chance, they don’t get to those moments of unbridled terror by unlucky accident, by genetic misfortune; they get to those moments—they experience so many of those unbearably excruciating moments—because we consciously do it to them, and for such selfish reasons.
Emotionally and psychologically tormented, physically mutilated, and sexually exploited from birth and then dragged off to violent death, they live these tormented and brutally cut-short lives because we think a steak is yummy, or dairy cheese is a necessity, or chicken flesh is homey, or eggs are a tradition, or bacon is hip. Chance got love and comfort; Chance has gotten and will get as much as care as she needs, whatever the cost, whatever the debt or inconvenience incurred. They get shrugged shoulders. They get “I don’t wanna hear about it.” They get “mmm, bacon” and “I can’t live without cheese” and flesh sliced and sold and seared by the ounce.
Their fear isn’t any different from Chance’s. Their pain isn’t any different. Their wish to live and play and their capacity to bond and love aren’t any different. The only way they differ, in any substantive sense, is in the value we arbitrarily place on their lives, in how we treat and use them—whether we choose to eat them and thus support brutality and terror or choose to respect them, protect them, fight for them, relieve rather than cause their suffering.
Photo of calf by Flickr user yuan2003
Stephanie Ernst
Marji
Kelly G.
Deb
Mary Martin
Beautiful post, Stephanie. Your description of Chance’s incident made the last moments of my cat’s life come rushing back at me. It’s been 11 years since he died, but those final moments when I found him at the top of my stairs in the middle of respiratory failure, the sounds, the movements. I’ll never forget how those eyes that always looked to me for food & companionship were suddenly filled with unbridled fear & confusion, or the way he buried his face in my hair the whole car ride to the vet, his little body heaving & shaking. I’ll never EVER forget those moments.
It is a turning point for some of us: when you see true fear, true suffering, in a being that you have loved & shared your life with, you can extend your vision to see that all animals feel these things the exact same way. It is, as you say, the labels we place on “food” animals that allow the abuse to continue. Bacon instead of pig, steak instead of cow. How about “fashionable vest” instead of cat?
I wish nothing but peace & love for both you & Chance as you enter this difficult stage of her life. But she is exceptionally lucky to have had you these last years of her life. On some level, she knows this.
Stephanie that was a beautiful & moving story. I hope that non vegans will read this. There are so many ‘animal lovers’ out there, people who love people like Chance, but wouldn’t show the same compassion to pigs & chickens & cows & all those other animals caged & brutalised & tortured & living a life of misey & deprivation. You took me from crying for Chance to crying for all those faceless & nameless animals that deserve the same love that you give Chance. Thank you Stephanie for sharing Chance’s story. My heart is with you & Chance as it is with all the other animals on this planet that I cannot see or do not have the privilege of knowing
Best wishes of courage and strength to you and Chance. I don’t think there’s any experience that’s sadder to live through. May you still have many peaceful moments together.
Stephanie, may each happy, loving moment you and Chance share be stamped in your two sweet hearts forever.
The energy of LOVE that feeds you and Chance is so big that it has to be overflowing and reaching and touching and comforting every other creature in the universe.
LOVE never disintegrates, never declines, never dies.
Thanks for your replies and your care not only for all the other animals but also for Chance, friends. I’m grateful that we’re not nearly at any kind of end-of-life point yet (I don’t think, anyway). Terrible arthritis and allergies and this worrisome disc herniation aside, her health in general (e.g., her organ health) is quite good, and she’s mostly happy, even if frustrated sometimes and itchy all the time. And if hind-end paralysis is in her future, that’s going to be upsetting and difficult, but we’ll figure it out; we’re just taking it a day at a time. (The reason the vets can’t do the surgery isn’t that she isn’t strong enough for it–she is; it’s that the surgery this time carries a greater risk than last time of causing paralysis and incontinence.)
How frustrating it is to have such boundless love, unyielding and truly unconditional, and to be unable to give that compassion to those who will never know it. I cry thinking about it, of how much we funnel our hearts into these special companion animals and how those feelings cannot reach those who may need it most (both nonhuman and human).
My heart goes out to Chance, and to you, and to the billions who will never know any of this.
I think there are many of us who feel a kinship with you and Chance and your trials. After reading this account I wanna give Chance a hug, but since I’m not there will you give her one for me?
Everything in this post is exactly true and communicated so clearly. Nail-on-the-head clearly. I will forward it as widely as possible.
I’ve been a long time getting through emails so I just encountered this post. I hope hope hope that Chance is still with you and doing well.
This post rips me to shreds, because I lost my dog in December and my cat three weeks ago yesterday. After Ringo died I took a road trip and found myself alongside a truck full of cows somewhere in Virginia and although I did not compare Ringo’s illness with the panic of these animals, there was not even a split second when I saw their agony and wondered what makes death matter – is it to do with those who are left still living and whether they can mourn? Every life is precious and worthwhile (perhaps with the exception of Dick Cheney and similar people, but I digress…) and it struck me as impossibly sad that those cows not only would not be mourned, but that their deaths, unlike Ringo’s, would not be painless, would not be after long and hopefully fulfilling lives, would be, like their very existences, for profit.
When I took Simcha for an ultrasound several weeks before he died and he was helpless on the vet table, I was struck yet again by the power of humans over non-humans. Simcha was possibly my greatest teacher; he made me into an animal rights activist (when he was just a wee young kitty and I took him to get neutuered he cried and cried and cried in the car. I can tell you exactly where I was on this back road in Nowhere, TN, how it hit me like a ton of bricks that but for some strange twist of fate, Simcha could have been in a lab somewhere and all his crying would not have helped him one bit. He might never stop. And then I started to understand why animals need rights).
I had to make the decision to actively euthanize both my dog and cat, but by the time they died it was only a question of days, if not hours. Their lives, like all lives, meant something. I only wish all animals could die surrounded by love and not as the result of greed and gluttony and cruelty.