A Whole Website Showing Brindi Was Already Well-Trained & Never Considered Dangerous

Here's an entire website I set up back in 2008 that shows that nobody ever thought Brindi was a dangerous dog going back to the start: Support Brindi!

There are letters from neighbors, friends, the local dog groomer, the local kennel, and even the mail carrier. They constitute abundant proof (as many were submitted to court and were not contradicted)  I had already trained Brindi before HRM seized her, and that I had trained her pretty darn well. I should hope so, because I put off the foundation work on my house for a year specifically to get Brindi to a point where I could take her anywhere on or off-leash and depend on her to behave well!! She is a fast learner and wants to please, but no dog trains itself. 

And even the incidents that occurred where she got loose accidentally and went after a dog nearing her territory - things HRM appears to have used as reasons to seize Brindi - in reality prove the opposite of dangerous, as she did so little harm or none at all each time. No sign of escalation.

If this wasn't the truth, HRM would have laid charges against me way before it took Brindi, and likely taken her way before July 2008; and, I would never have been able to save her life!! 

Support Brindi has been online for all these years on purpose, as a resource intended for the average local reporter and the average newsreader in the Halifax Regional Municipality, so they don't have to rely only on whatever story HRM tells.

What are your chances if Halifax decides to seize your dog?

Compiled before and after HRM's bizarre staging of an adoption process the first week of January... 
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Don't care about me or whatever - for those inclined not to. It's fine. I don't matter. What really matters is whether you're okay with living in a place where the city can get away with such blatant abuse of the law and its power, year after year. And not just with Brindi.

This could have happened to anybody - whether perceived as weak or not. It could have been a dog that actually did bite somebody once - a dog not trained in obedience - a dog with a higher aggression level. And its owner would never have been able to save their dog's life. That very thing has already happened at least once since they took Brindi.

I was able to stop HRM from killing Brindi for the simple reason that Brindi is an excellent, well-trained dog that succumbed to instinct - yet exhibited good restraint. And the fact is that I am the one who trained Brindi to behave so well, both at the SPCA and the Graham's. She is so good because I spent a whole year drilling obedience training with her, and did it again for two months after I got her out after two years in the slammer. She is so good because she was able to remember that training even after two years.

Read the trainer's statement and the vet's statement for evidence! Both are posted to this blog (see above and the left-hand column).

Secrets, Lies, and Abuse: thoughts from late 2015

I am posting this text from late 2015 now, in light of what Halifax - in the form of Katherine Salsman, Hope Swinimer, and Christine and Derek Graham - did to me and Brindi for over five years, topped by their blatant lies about adoption last week. They have essentially stolen my dog and neglected her health for five years. She looks ragged and worn and yet they told media she's been living in the Graham's home all this time - and allowed to play with other dogs! Clearly untrue, especially since they swore to the court in 2012 that she was kept away from dogs and locked up in the kennel!

For what it's worth this is how I felt a lot of the time, as I struggled to keep going so I could keep Brindi alive:

_______________________________________________________

Victims of abuse .... often hide their abuse from others.
Abusers often count on this as well. It's an age-old mechanism: the more they intimidate their victims, the less likelihood their misdeeds will be discovered.

I just realized I may be doing this unconsciously to some degree. And I suspect it may be a mistake. Why hide it? Maybe because I don't think of myself as a victim of abuse. It's not like there's support groups out there for victims of municipalities - and admittedly, this goes pretty far beyond bureaucratic bullying.

But maybe also that despite evidence surrounding me, I don't like to think of myself as a victim. Who really does?

Brindi no longer considered dangerous? GIVE HER BACK!

Please pinch me!!! Or don't, just hit me over the head with something, just knock me out forever and ever.

My anger is a mask for deep, deep sorrow and despair. My anger is my shield from the image of my poor, poor beauty.  Grinding and stomping the last bits of my shattered to the ground, it seems like all local media outlets, silent for five years, suddenly jumped aboard the "Let's blame Francesca" wagon.

Yet most of the day, it looked to me as though HRM was done for - the more they tried to show they had really done a great thing for Brindi by locking her up for 7 years and by now adopting her to a "good home" (never to be named or pictured), the worse it looked. For a fraction of a second, I may have even started thinking things just might turn my way. 

After all, the more that HRM talks about adoption, the more it looks totally in the wrong. And I was and am in the right. But. I didn't count on the fairy tale factor. The spin-dry cycle. The great fictional talents of this municipality and its stewards.

HRM is turning the screw yet again, telling a tale of how they have rehabilitated my good dog, and now (just in time for HRM to land a dismissal order using similarly shameless fictions), now, thanks to them, she is "no longer considered dangerous." So there's a whole new script: Brindi, in the wonderful care of HRM, has been transformed - not into a chronically ill senior with a dull coat and glassy eyes, but into a - gosh! - "good dog."

And the CBC headline? "Brindi the dog to be adopted after lengthy court battle." The insinuation? BIZARRELY: that the lengthy court battle part is MY FAULT!!! Nothing at all to do with HRM's seven years of mindless determination to refuse all reasonable alternatives to KILLING MY DOG!

HRM Solicitor Katherine Salsman Said No to Adoption & All Alternatives to Killing Brindi: 2010 Memo

Another dismal end of year, and the most dismal end.
It's time to get things straightened out once and for all. This is not your average dog case. From the outside, it's not always clear. I forget this often because I am in the thick of this struggle. What gets said and proven in court isn't reported. In between, the press passes on whatever the city says. The public fills in the blanks, based on general knowledge of other cases. So I am going to put this out as clearly as I can:

• I did not prolong Brindi's time in the pound.
• I am not a dog owner who doesn't know anything about dogs and doesn't train their dog.
• I did not fail to take incidents seriously.
• I did not ignore a muzzle order on Brindi twice, or at all.
• My memo to HRM from 2010 is the first of many documents dealing with adoption. In that memo I listed five offers I made in person to the HRM lawyer. I offered to plead guilty and pay fines if they would let Brindi go on any one of those offers. This would have avoided a costly trial and gotten Brindi out of the pound right away.

I asked HRM to choose one of these measures and I would plead guilty and pay fines: 

1. Release Brindi to me pending trial, and if HRM wanted, I would put up a bond as high as $10,000, or, 

2. Let Brindi go to a foster home pending the outcome of the trial, or, 

3. Drop the prosecution's request to the judge to order Brindi to be killed, or, 

4. Release Brindi to me and I would take her out of the country and go back to the States.  

5. Let Brindi go to another owner, either here or anywhere else, i.e., ADOPTION!