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Activists
Face Off at County Meeting
Tammy S. Grimes will go to any length to show that chaining a dog for hours at a time is cruel and unusual punishment. That's how she came to found Dogs Deserve Better, a national nonprofit with more than 100 representatives in the United States, Australia and Canada. That's how she found herself spending the night in a doorway in her hometown of Tipton, Pa. Chained. Tammy S. Grimes, right, of Tipton, Pa., founder of Dogs Deserve Better, greets Crystal Sinclair, 19, whose infant daughter, Makayla Sinclair, was killed by a dog. With Sinclair is her 4-month-old daughter, Logan. Grimes and her organization oppose keeping dogs on chains. This Monday saw Grimes protesting in the street outside the Spartanburg County Council building. Grimes was one of a handful of demonstrators who braved searing afternoon heat to protest county council's refusal to approve a proposed ordinance requiring residents to limit tethering their dogs for a few hours at a time. Holding placards bearing photos of Makayla Sinclair, the 2-year-old who was mauled to death by two of her neighbor's tethered Great Danes in 2003, the demonstrators distributed fliers and waited patiently outside the County Council building. The dogs, which had been chained to a tree in their owner's back yard, were subsequently put to sleep. Among the demonstrators was Makayla's mother, Crystal Sinclair. Toting her 4-month-old daughter Logan, Crystal said she wanted to be at the County Council when she heard that Grimes was organizing a demonstration. Makayla's death was the first of three fatalities in Spartanburg that involved chained dogs. The latest was 4-year-old Asia Turner, who was attacked by her family's two Rottweilers. The
fatalities prompted debate in the community about the wisdom of
chaining dogs, and prompted some council members to consider sponsoring
an ordinance that would restrict the amount of time a dog could
be tethered. Not
on the agenda The
issue did not garner the support of a majority of council members
and hence did not make Monday's County Council meeting agenda. "We
can only hope and pray that council listens to us," Sinclair
said. "They kept 10 Great Danes chained in a yard measuring
maybe 30 square feet. They were running an unlicensed puppy farm."
Apart
from the inhumanity of tethering dogs, especially in the summers,
Grimes also said chained dogs are more likely to be vicious, quoting
statistics from a 2002 book, Fatal Dog Attacks. The
author, Karen Delise, found that chained dogs caused a quarter of
all documented fatalities attributed to dogs between 1965 and 2001.
Not
everyone agrees Judy
Beltz, a Spartanburg county dog breeder, disagreed. "Not
all chained dogs are vicious. My neighbor has a German Shepherd
that is always leashed and it is the sweetest little thing. They
have tried fencing the dog, but it just jumps over it. And chaining
has not made it vicious at all," she said. Beltz
said she had come to county council to counter some of the allegations
that animal rights activists made. "These
people deal in half truths and skewed figures," she said. Tom
Davies, a concerned citizen and longtime dog-owner said, this was
the kind of issue that the county should not try to legislate. Davies
was concerned that animal activists from outside the state would
come to Spartanburg without knowing the issues in the community.
"Look,
I'm all for animal welfare, but these extremists come down here
without knowing anything about our way of life and try to meddle
in our affairs." Davies
saw unsupervised children as one key factor in the three Spartanburg
dog attack cases. "Maybe they ought to chain their children."
"I'm sure more kids get hurt run over by SUVs backing up than by dog mauling."
Dogs Deserve Better, Inc. is a 501c3 national nonprofit organization. Mothers Against Dog Chaining is currently a program of Dogs Deserve Better, and as such all donations are tax-deductible according to IRS guidelines. All funds donated to the Mothers Against Dog Chaining program will initially go into the DDB general fund account; however, they will be earmarked and used for Mothers Against Dog Chaining materials and campaigns. |
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CONTACT: Tammy
Grimes |
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