FIRST DAY OF MOFO: A LITTLE BIT OF SYMPATHY

Today is the first day of MOFO, but it's not what you think! It refers to the Vegan Month Of Food Blog. How fun this will be! I'm newly changing to a cruelty-free lifestyle, not as easy as you might think. No matter what your religious views, most of us were raised hearing about the Golden Rule, doing unto others as we would have others doing unto us. I invite you to listen to the music of Robin Trower's group as they perform A LITTLE BIT OF SYMPATHY:

The light is strong and the man is weak 

And the world walks in between 

So rise above on the wings of love 

See and let yourself be seen 

See and let yourself be seen 

So fill your cup and drink it on up 

For tomorrow never comes 

If you wield the rod, answer to your god 

But me I'll be up and gone 

I'll be up and gone, gone 

I'll be up and a gone 

If the sea was glass and the land all gone 

Would you still be a friend to me 

When my time has passed, is it too much to ask 

For a little bit of sympathy 

Just a little bit of sympathy, lord 

A little bit of sympathy

A little bit of sympathy, lord, yeah 

Little bit of sympathy 

Little bit of sympathy 

A little bit of sympathy 

A little bit of sympathy 

A little bit of sympathy

My dog Maple, a chow/lab mix, was killed on a country road just over a year ago, only a few months after being rescued from a hoarder who had confined several hundred dogs in an unlit, filthy hog barn. When I first met Maple, she was terrified of everything. She cowered in a corner at the animal shelter, shivering, her muscles clamped as hard as wood. She was crusty with mange and ragged with old scars. In the few weeks that she was home with me, the wrinkles on her forehead began to relax. Although I never got to see her wag her tail, she was beginning to meet my eyes, beginning to nuzzle me, beginning to cuddle. In the darkness of the pre-dawn mornings, she would roll over on her back, not cringing in submission but inviting me to rub her tummy. With both of us living with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, we were able to sympathize with each other's emotional state. 

One day on the front porch she was startled by a loud sound and bolted loose. She only ran across the street, nervously waiting for me to come save her. Tragically, the thing that she was the most afraid of came upon the scene, a white guy in blue jeans. She RAN. She ran and ran and ran and ran. I found out a few days later that she headed for the nearby cemetery where my mother is buried, a peaceful place I'd brought her several times. Near there she was hit by a pickup truck and smashed to bloody chunks. I found out what happened to her because of a phone call from a sympathetic man who found her ID tag with my number on it; I didn't question the circumstances, nor how the battered tag and scrap of collar came to be so clean. I also heard from the Street Department in my town and got a parallel story from a very sympathetic man whose job it is to clean up shattered animal corpses from the roads. I resolved to make Maple's short and painful life count for something by helping other dogs who were suffering similar lives. 

The thing about the human brain is that it naturally extrapolates. It comes to a conclusion and then relates that conclusion to other nearby situations. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before I involved myself not only in dog rescue, but in cat rescue as well. My husband and I began driving rescue transports, volunteering to save dogs and cats from certain death in the pound by helping bring them to a safe haven, either to a foster environment or to what is referred to as their "furever home." These transports often involve multiple drivers across many state lines. The animals seem to understand that they're being helped and are usually not only calm, but seem genuinely grateful.

Time went by and I started volunteering at a local shelter, walking dogs that stay in single concrete runs with metal bars just like jail cells: dogs that were lucky and were eventually adopted, dogs that were eventually put down because the shelter filled up beyond capacity with newcomers. I also started saving my newspapers for  another shelter that takes in stray cats and countless dogs rescued from puppy mills, the factory-type operations that mass-produce puppies for sale by confining the breeding parents in small wire cages for their entire lives, never allowing them to experience grass or kiddie pools or rawhide chews or any of the things that should make up a family dog's life. Their nails overgrow, their teeth decay, their fur mats, and often they become blinded by the spray of high pressure hoses used to clean their wire cages. 

It was a surprise to me when one summer afternoon I saw a ripple in the backyard birdbath and discovered a wasp struggling in the water. The Old Me would have done nothing, but the New Me saw a doomed creature suffering, so I couldn't turn away. I got a stick and helped her crawl onto it, setting her down in the grass so she could fly away and get on with her life. I felt strange. I felt good. I realized that struggle is struggle and pain is pain and that if I were committed to honoring the memory of Maple by easing others' pain, then the struggle of a wasp should be no less respected than the struggle of a cat or a dog. 

Seeing videos on Facebook showing what happens during the slaughter of livestock -- called "processing" by people in the industry -- was worse than the situation with the wasp. The domino effect continued ... the way chickens are treated, the way pigs are treated, the way dairy and beef cattle are treated, the way fur animals are treated ... all the things in life that I'd taken for granted for decades came crashing down, each crash leading to another realization and another crash. 

My bowels have taken a few months to get used to the dietery changes. I no longer buy fur, leather, or any products tested on animals. I found an app for my smartphone that can be used at the grocery to find out if a company or product is vegan. It was the first app I ever downloaded, in fact. And speaking of the grocery store, I go there less and less because so many of the products are obtained with the torture of sentient beings. No more Chef Boyardee ravioli, no more Campbell's pork and beans, no more Sarah Lee cheesecake, no more eggs, no more ice cream, no more bread, no more most of that shit. I found a health food store that sells locally-produced vegan products and I found a little farm shop outside of town that sells what it grows. It was bittersweet to buy some home-made maple syrup, as if Maple were showing me her sweet approval. 

In future MOFO blogs, I'll describe some of the products I'm discovering. To quote Robin Trower, then:

The light is strong and the man is weak 

And the world walks in between

So rise above on the wings of love 

See and let yourself be seen 

See and let yourself be seen