How do you live in the world knowing evil, knowing you have no protection from its clutches?

Nightmares. Or more accurately, dreams that disturb. My night was filled with them. The one I remember most vividly was of driving and suddenly being in my old neighborhood of University Park and Tibe was with me in the car. I was frightened to have him in Prince George’s County given that he is banned there, but he was sitting on my lap while I was driving and was licking me and giving me love and affection as though he was a little puppy. I was simultaneously so happy to be cuddling with Tibe in the car, to see his incredibly affectionate, kind and generous self, and frightened that something bad would happen to him. When I woke and was in Saginaw, underneath the wool quilt (it is freezing here–25 degrees on our morning walk and more snow flurries), with Tibe snuggled next to me, I was relieved.

What has happened with Tibe has become a cosmological, spiritual, moral, and philosophical question for me. One that I can distill more clearly now that we are gaining more distance. So here is what happened: on the last Monday morning of October, Tibe was agitated and pulled away from the beloved. Another dog, a golden retriever was nearby and Tibe attacked him. They had a dog fight for about thirty seconds. The beloved pulled Tibe off the other dog, and we all went home. The other dog had to go to the vet and have stitches. We paid the vet bill and apologized profusely.

Now in the world I thought we lived in, that should have been it, an end to the terrible accident. As a friend said when his dog was bit at doggie day care, he took the check from the other dog owner and grudgingly accepted the apology. Dogs fight; dog fights happen. That is not what happened to us, however.

Owner of the dog cashed our check and filed a complaint with animal control. Actually, that is fine with me. That is why animal control exists. They investigated immediately and determined that Tibe was fine in our home, that we are responsible and responsive dog owners, and they suggested that we continue with his training and take a few weeks of not walking him in the neighborhood. We did all of those things. Again, that should have been it, an end to the terrible accident and the investigation by animal control. That is not what happened.

The neighbors organized to call animal control saying that our dog was vicious, they were afraid of him, of us walking him, of walking by our house, and that their concerns were greater than anyone else’s and the dog should be removed from the community. Over a dozen calls to animal control. An angry, bigoted mob of people, primarily women, who wanted our beloved Tibe either put down or banned from the neighborhood.

Eleven days after the incident, animal control, responding to the frenzy, came to our home to impound Tibe. Our county puts to sleep ov 8,000 animals a year. In November 2015, when they wanted to take Tibe into the shelter, 127 dogs were euthanized, including 26 healthy dogs. Knowing these statistics because we adopted our beloved Vita from the shelter, there was no way I was going to let Tibe be taken by the county. So we put him in an alternative care situation with a member of the rescue from which we adopted Tibe. He stayed there eighteen days until I drove with him and Vita to Saginaw, MI. We have been here since then. In January, there was a full trial for Tibe, all of the mob of bigots and bullies turned out to talk about why Tibe should be put down so that they could live and enjoy “their” neighborhood in the ways that they want. Tibe was convicted and sentenced to never return to Prince George’s County, where we have lived for fourteen years and own a home.

So those are the facts as I understand them. Now for the cosmological, spiritual, moral, and philosophical questions. Most baldly, the first question is how can I live in a world that allows this to happen? I think that question has paralyzed me for the past four months. How can I walk though and occupy a world where this happen? A dogfight is of course most serious to the guardians of the dogs. I do not want to diminish its significance to the people involved, but for people not directly involved, for community bystanders, how can their actions be justified? If we cannot individually and as a community recognize that a dogfight while serious to the dogs and humans involved needs to be contextualized in the face of other crises, then how can we recognize the significant issues of our world. Or, let me be more direct, I am aware that there are many more terrible things than a dogfight and even to being banned from my home. War, forced migration, the threats of nuclear war and climate change, poverty, aggressive policing and punitive and racist criminal justice system, murder, violence. I could go on. There are real problems in the world. These problems in the world regularly make me ask the question, how can I live in a world where these things happen?

This question is to me a fundamental one that prompts activism and commitments to change. If the answer to the question is, I cannot live in the world, the next step is, I can change the world. Yet it is also a question that breeds despair, the next step may be depression and a sense that the world cannot be occupied. This is the constant challenge for activists, balancing these answers to the question. So in that way, what has happened is not outside of my experience.

Except that it is. Large societal and global issues invite community and national solutions. What happened to us with Tibe does not offer abstracted solution. Reconciling myself to the experience of the past six months means accepting that there are people in the world who are evil. People who will hurt other people and create circumstances that are hateful and vengeful to people who they know and to whom were once socially kind. People who are narcissistic and only concerned about themselves in a society that is predicated on some sense of empathy and commitment to other’s well-being. How can I live in a world like that? What is the solution?

The only solution to advocate to prevent my circumstances from happening to other people is individual. Telling people, don’t be gross. Don’t bully. Don’t be unkind. Don’t create circumstances that hurt other people. All good things to advocate, but completely unenforceable. There is no way for me or anyone to be safe in a world where people can act the way our neighbors did. There is no way to inoculate ourselves against such evilness, especially since it is unrecognized and possible nascent in all people.

I want to pause here because of course many people have suggested that the easy solution to our problems in life is to simply give up Tibe. I’ve written previously about why that is a non-starter for us in particular and I have written about the uncertainty of our future. That is, what if Tibe was untrainable? What if he really was everything bad that neighbors described? Well, friends, we are now five months into our life in Michigan. Tibe is over two years old. We have been working with him on lots of training issues. He is a lovely dog. It is a testament to patience and love and sticking with a difficult project. Do not get me wrong, Tibe still has issues. He will bark like crazy at cars and this morning he barked at a runner in the park. Yet he is getting better. We do not keep him around other dogs. But he can look out the window and not bark. He can see other dogs outside and not bark. He is not jumping up on people–or on me when I handle him. He is kind and loving with us, with Emma, with Vita. And he will continue to grow and learn. He is a great dog and as a result of the last six months, the dog of a lifetime for us.

Another solution to our situation, one that we would have had to avail ourselves of if we did not have the resources or the wherewithal to move, would have been to stay where we were and lobby for an alternate resolution through animal control. We unwittingly accepted the ban (which I continue to maintain is illegal and unenforceable) by leaving the neighborhood. Had we not had the resources and the support of our respective employers, we would not have been able to leave and decamp to Michigan.

All of this of course is mulling our actions and our solutions but I struggle with what can be done in the world to prevent such situations in the future. I continually return to the idea that there is no solution. That I must reconcile myself to this evilness in the world. And to my own vulnerability to these evil people.

How can I live in a world knowing that this evilness exists and that I cannot protect myself or the people I love from it? I have no answer to that question, only rage.

Rage of course offers no sustenance, it east us from within. The only thing that sustains me is the fact that every day Emma and Tibe need to be walked four or five times. They need to be fed and cuddled and loved. So does Vita. She expects breakfast and dinner and is grateful when I position a towel around her while she sleeps. She continually reminds us it is freezing here, even in the house.

How do you live in the world knowing evil and knowing you have no protection from its clutches?

Tibe and Vita on the bed the other night.