The numbers are growing.... and time is ticking.

Well, it seems there are well over a thousand good people out there who have taken the time to actually read and sign a petition in favor of releasing my precious dog. Right now, the 500-mark is about to be broken on Care2, and the ipetition site, older, is at 657 names. Plus well over 100 names on local petitions, hoping to get at least 300.

How is it possible in this day and age that despite SO MUCH effort and so MANY people, I have yet to rescue my dog from the pound and certain death, but getting a suspected criminal, even a violent one, released from police custody is often a matter of mere hours? The Enron execs whiled away three years before they were even put on trial, free to come and go anywhere they pleased, evidently. The vice president of America shot somebody in the face and there was no talk of charges...

I am so fearful of what condition Brindi is in, above all, emotionally. I know how much time it took for her to forgive me for giving her up for ten-day stay at a nice kennel, namely, seven full days before she would look me in the eye, and longer before I felt she really trusted me again. This time around, it's anybody's guess. I cannot bear it. But that is getting ahead of myself, I suppose. And even after all these weeks, I still can't believe she is there at all.

Someone who knows us both well and has little reason to trust the SPCA nevertheless believes that by now they must be giving her lots of attention, maybe even letting her roam the office. I would so like to believe this. I would feel a lot better. But I can't be sure it, or of anything, only that it has been OVER FIVE WEEKS and that she is not living the life she should be living, not by a long shot. Then again, so many animals aren't, dogs among them. If day after day, year after year, a maker of expensive dog food could actually lock dogs into 2 x 3 metal cages, some with slats instead of floors and wood planks instead of beds, and subject them to the torture of having solid chunks of muscle removed from their flanks, and worse, anything is possible.

How many of us truly believe humans are the superior species? Or is it all down to the arbitrary evolutionarily granted privilege of having a thumb and walking upright??