Your Vancouver Sun
In dogged pursuit of relief for tied-up canines
Woman chains herself to pole for 13 hours to protest treatment of dogs
Gerry Bellett, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, June 30, 2007
It's been a busy week in the zany world of doggy politics.
It opened with news of vigilante dog snatchers targeting allegedly irresponsible dog owners across the Lower Mainland and ended with Marion Hewko standing with a chain around her neck at a busy Chilliwack intersection.
Hewko described her Friday vigil -- chained for 13 hours to a post at the intersection of Lickman Road and Luckakuck Way under the Maple Leaf and the banner Dogs Deserve Better -- as an act of solidarity with abused and chained dogs everywhere.
It bemused many passing motorists, as the intersection is a busy local route and lies close to a turnoff from Highway 1.
"Some people give me the thumbs-up. Some others looked disgusted, but they're probably the guilty ones who keep their dogs tied up. I just hope they go away and think about it," Hewko said seven hours into her protest, which began at 5 a.m. and was planned to last until 6 p.m.
"If just one dog is untied and treated properly because of this, it's worth it," she said.
B.C. is chock-a-block with advocacy groups, societies and organizations concerned with the welfare of dogs.
Now there's apparently a direct action gang whose members brazenly pose as animal welfare officials as they steal supposedly abused animals. On Monday, a man and a woman drove up to a Burnaby home and presented phony papers to the owners of Tommy, an American Labrador puppy, before snatching the dog.
While guerrilla tactics appeal to some in the dog welfare movement, Hewko has no time for them.
"I really want to stress that we don't believe in stealing dogs. Hell, no, that's wrong," she said at the end of a 30-foot tether.
Hewko organized the B.C. and national branches of Dogs Deserve Better in January, after searching for a way to better the lot of man's oldest companion. The organization was founded in the U.S. to end the suffering endured by dogs kept on chains or penned for life. This weekend marks the beginning of the society's annual "chain-off" week, when members will chain themselves to doghouses across the U.S. to make their point.
"I just love dogs, but it used to irk me seeing people with dogs loose in the back of pickup trucks in real danger of getting hurt and seeing dogs tied up," said Hewko, who works for the Chilliwack Society for Community Living.
By noon Friday, she was hungry and cold -- and bored.
"Now I know just how a dog feels being tied up like this. They get bored and they will get angry. I got myself tangled up with the post just moving around but I could undo it. A dog who gets caught around a tree can't.
"Dogs are social animals who want to belong to a pack.
"Keeping them alone, ostracizing them from family and friends, that's just cruel," she said.
Most municipalities have bylaws forbidding the chaining of dogs, but Hewko says many people living in the rural areas of the Fraser Valley don't care.
"You can drive by farms and see dogs chained up all the time or kept in pens. You'll find German shepherds kept chained in the yard outside and a little Chihuahua kept inside as a pet. Why is that? I just hope people will think about what they are doing and stop abusing their animals."
The group raises money -- not huge amounts, she admits, but enough to help with rescue work.
A donations jar by her side only had $5 in it by noon.
"That was from a co-worker," Hewko admitted.
"But I did take pledges and so far I've raised $140."
While Hewko tried to stay comfortable for 13 hours with a chain round her neck, her own pet, Maggie, a two-year-old golden Labrador, was at home in comfort.
"She's probably asleep on my bed," she said.