I am Lennox

Lennox was far from the first dog killed because of breed prejudice, but he is the most famous.

Lennox was the pit bull type dog (a Labrador cross) seized in Belfast, Northern Ireland two years ago on the basis of a ban on pit bulls. Lennox, who had no record of bad behavior, was held in appalling conditions while his family exhausted all legal appeals to save his life.  Authorities in Belfast rejected the legal arguments, the offers to take him to the U.S., and the pleas from well-known activists.  Lennox was killed on July 11, in Belfast. 

As news of his death spread, dog lovers posted pictures of their own dogs with the caption “I am Lennox.”  The principle is familiar: there but for the grace of god, or sheer luck, go I.  A few months ago, there was a similar rise in self-portraits of people wearing hoodies with the caption “I am Trayvon Martin.”

Some people asked why so much energy was spent trying to save a single dog, when so many other dogs, not to mention people and other animals, suffer and die daily.  It’s not that Lennox mattered more than them.  But he mattered just as much.  It is impossible not to empathize with Lennox’s family: we cannot help but imagine our own dogs taken away from us, held in a bare cement run and (by all accounts) treated without kindness, and then killed.

Thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of dogs die every year as a result of breed discrimination in the U.S.  Every one of them mattered -- no more, no less than Lennox.  Many of the dogs who die in shelters were strays or abandoned, but a significant number are beloved family companions – ones who got lost and were killed in a shelter before their people could find them or who were surrendered because their families could not find housing that would accept a dog who looked like theirs.

Breed discrimination kills indirectly as well, when rescue groups choose not to pull pit bull type dogs from euthanasia lists at the shelter because those dogs are deemed “less adoptable,” or because their foster families live in apartment complexes with breed bans or have insurance that does not cover certain breeds.

Miami-Dade residents have the chance to end their city’s breed ban on August 14. Decades of a pit bull ban have killed countless good dogs without making Miami one bit safer for humans.  (In fact, dog bites have declined more slowly in Miami than in similarly sized cities without breed bans.)  Ending the breed ban in our state’s largest city would be a good way to honor Lennox.