A SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS

Some time back there was an article in the LA Times headlined “Who Gets Custody of Fido?” that left me both horrified and gratified at the same time.

Seems that in a Midwestern state a bill had been introduced to the state legislature that outlined how divorcing couples and the courts should handle custody battles over pets. The article cites the need for such legality by telling about two such divorce cases. The first was where joint custody of the family German shepherd, who had digestion problems, was awarded to the wife during the week and the husband on the weekends. Each Friday the husband picked up the dog for the weekend, and each Sunday afternoon just prior to returning the dog to his ex, the man would feed the dog fatty sausages, which the dog upchucked about two hours after he returned to his weekend home.

The second is where the wife, after two years of wrangling in divorce court, got full custody of the dog and the minute the divorce was finalized she had the dog euthanized.

Of course it was the second illustration that horrified me, not only that the dog was euthanized for no good reason at all but that any human being could have so little regard for either a dog or a former spouse. I am appalled that people can be so horribly vindictive.

But the gratification came when I had to acknowledge that in spite of the awfulness of my own divorce, not in the process itself but in what my husband felt was acceptable in love and war, neither of us would never, ever had done such a thing. Now I have to admit that in my lowest depressive moments I entertained ideas worse than either of those, but I have always believed that down deep it really was not in my being to ever take any such action that would have caused so much pain to another and that time was what would bring healing to me. It did.