An international campaign to save the life of a pit bull-type terrier in Belfast failed this week despite appeals from Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe
LENNOX WAS PUT down on Wednesday morning after more than two years on “death row”. Countless late calls for a reprieve for the seven-year-old Belfast dog, including one from Northern Ireland’s First Minister, Peter Robinson, left no impression on Belfast City Council.
There was Irish and some British media interest in the annual Twelfth of July convulsions in Ardoyne, in north Belfast, this week, but the big international focus was on a small house 400m away from the flashpoint area, on Disraeli Close, off the top of the loyalist Shankill Road.
That’s where Lennox’s owner, Caroline Barnes, and her 14-year-old daughter, Brooke, live. It is a home that loves dogs. There are lots of doggie ornaments around the house. Out in the backyard are Juicy, a six-year-old boxer, and George, an eight-year-old Yorkshire terrier. Barnes also fosters dogs from sanctuaries, and she has worked as a vet’s assistant. She’s a responsible owner: her animals are licensed, microchipped, DNA registered and insured.
“There are a lot of dog lovers around the world, but there doesn’t seem to be any in the council,” she says. “The council were so single-minded and so intent on murdering him they were not willing to listen to anybody, not even the First Minister of Northern Ireland.”
The 36-year-old, who is “humbled” that so many people rallied to Lennox’s support, says that the stress caused by her attempts to save him has left her with debilitating illness and that Brooke, who has kidney problems and chronic asthma, is also suffering physically and emotionally because of the issue.
An online petition to save Lennox was signed by more than 185,000 people; the pit bull-type terrier had 75,000 fans on Facebook; and on Twitter the campaign to save him attracted the interest of 10,000 people. These included, Barnes says, the actor Russell Crowe, the former boxer Lennox Lewis (after whom the dog was named) and Tom Cruise.
The First Minister wondered why Lennox couldn’t be rehomed abroad, as an international dog trainer had offered; the local MP Nigel Dodds and the Minister of Finance, Sammy Wilson, also supported the campaign.
But others were baffled that the life of a dog would trigger such interest. Wouldn’t some find the description of murder excessive, for examlpe? “To pin him to a metal table and inject him with poison, I call that murder,” says Barnes. “To put down a dog is something a caring owner does when it’s ill or in great pain and nothing can be done. The owner does it out of love and respect, but to put down a dog that has done no wrong, other than way he looks, is murder.”
And that’s the crux of this case: the way Lennox looked. He was impounded in May 2010 as a pit bull-type dog, as opposed to being an actual pit bull. Under the UK Dangerous Dogs Act he was therefore deemed dangerous to the public. Barnes says he was seized after a dog warden who called to deliver three licences for her pets noticed Lennox and decided he was dangerous under the Act. “If I had never been an honest citizen, and not licensed my dogs, Lennox would be here today.”
She adds that Lennox never bit anyone, although he could be “nervous” with strangers. He quickly got used to callers, she says. “The Chinese delivery man, the binman, the recycling man, the postman – all of those had no issues with Lennox, because he knew them and was used to them. Nobody ever made complaints about Lennox.”
Barnes argues that the law is unfair and that the focus should be on the “deed, not the breed” of the dog, a point that many vets support. At least she can be happy she did everything in her power to save him. Through fundraising and legal aid, she fought through three courts, ending up in the court of appeal, to save her pet. The council did not have a figure for the overall cost of the court cases, but the fees for legal aid, barristers, solicitors and international experts must run it into several thousand pounds.
A dog expert for the council contended that Lennox was dangerous and unpredictable. Two dog behaviourists with international reputations, Sarah Fisher and David Ryan, disagreed. Fisher flew to Belfast from England on Tuesday because Barnes was so distraught, with her husband, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer actor Anthony Head, joining her in solidarity.
“I do say that some dogs have to be destroyed because they are dangerous,” says Fisher. “But my observation of Lennox is that he was a dog who was polite, had good self-control and was willing to take direction from a stranger . . . My experience of the dog was joyful.”
But the council’s expert prevailed.
A second and seemingly perfect compromise – the middle-ground option that particularly appealed to Peter Robinson – also failed. Victoria Stilwell, a dog trainer who presents It’s Me or the Dog on the US Animal Planet TV channel, offered to take Lennox to her dog sanctuary, in Atlanta, and look after him for the rest of his days. But the council’s response was that “it would be reckless and irresponsible in this particular case for the council to simply move the dog to some other place where it would pose the same danger to others”. Again, the council argument legally prevailed.
Some of Lennox’s supporters were overzealous, which may not have helped the campaign. The council said that some staff were intimidated, including by a petrol-drenched death threat pushed through a home letter box, by slashed car tyres and by the verbal abuse of some family members.
Barnes says she had always condemned such action. She is certain that Lennox could have been offered a new life in the US but that the council couldn’t bear to back down. As for those who feel such concern for a dog is extreme, Barnes says, “They are the people who don’t own dogs, who don’t love dogs. Dogs become part of a family. That’s why people will have private burials for them, that’s why they will get bank loans to pay vet fees to ensure their animals are okay. I loved Lennox. We would not have been fighting for him if we did not love him.”
