19 October 2014

In Defense of the Dogs of Tonga

Copyright © 2014 by Thomas Gangale
@ThomasGangale

Today the police in the Kingdom of Tonga informed Dr. Marilyn Dudley-Flores and me that a criminal complaint has been filed against us. On the evening of 4 October 2014, a rowdy crowd of people from outlying villages congregated in a field adjoining our house on a Saturday night. We do not know for a fact, but we suspect with good cause, that alcohol was being consumed in quantity. I became alarmed when I heard a dog barking, and when I went out of our house to investigate, I saw several young men throwing stones at a dog. I intervened to end this cruel sport, but by that point the dog had been provoked to see all humans in that herd as a threat, and very predictably, when a toddler ran from the dog with no real cause, the dog identified it as the weak individual of the heard and attacked it. How badly was the little girl mauled? Marilyn, a trained US Army soldier, rendered first aid, and saw that the skin was pinched but not broken. I would not want to over-analyze the workings of the wolf brain, but it seems to me that the frightened dog employed a judicious and minimum use of force and gave a warning nip to the little girl as a member of what was perceived to be a threatening human herd. In any case, the mother thanked Marilyn for her assistance and compassion on the scene, but it would seem that she was subsequently ill-advise to lodge a criminal complaint, perhaps with the prospect of extracting money from palangi (white foreigners). Witness this faithlessness of a professed Christian kingdom. There is no proof that the dog in question was under our control, as there are a number of dogs in the neighborhood who resemble ours, which is no surprise given that Tongans allow dogs to breed out of control. Indeed, there is no physical evidence that the child was harmed at all.

Tragically, this casting of stones at dogs, this persecution, is all too common a sight in Tonga. Never in my experience have I seen a people perpetrate such gratuitous, pervasive, and systemic cruelty upon dogs. It is a societal sickness. And, this being true, it comes as no surprise that domestic violence is endemic in Tonga, for scientific studies show that there is an indisputable link between animal cruelty and domestic violence, not to mention to the more isolated phenomenon of serial murder.

In Tongan jurisprudence, a dog is presumed guilty. How ironic that a kingdom that professes to be Christian persecutes a species that is born in innocence. For whatever reason, many thousands of years ago, when the world was a much colder and less forgiving place, and humans had no more protection from the elements than the skins of other animals, some wolves made a decision to throw their lot with humans, to assist in the hunt and to share in its spoils. But that ancient pact between human and canine is not honored in Tonga; rather, it is materially breached. This noble species that helped us survive the Pleistocene Epoch is reviled; Tongans have made no place for them in their culture other than to abuse them and to prey upon them for food, not out of necessity, but only for sport. In 2013, our beloved dog was clubbed over the head and butchered for his meat. This is a matter of court record, as the court awarded us $2000 compensation.

One of the dogs under our protection, and who by that fact and without any other evidence, stands accused of the capital crime of biting a human, apparently called our house her home before we came here. We first knew her as a feral dog who dived under the house if we even we looked at her. She has littered three times under our house in the time that we have lived here, and I daresay that she herself was born under our house. It is her house as much as it is ours. In the course of more than a year of patience and kindness, we have befriended her, to the point that she first dared to venture into this house above which she was presumably born, and ultimately suckled her final litter in our bed. I say "final" because the first chance we had to entice her into an automobile and her litter was sufficiently suckled, we had her spayed. It is a free service of the Tongan Ministry of Agriculture. We do not need to have any more dogs being abused by Tongans.

Why would she or any Tongan dog not bite humans when threatened? That is the law of survival, and who is to say that this is not God's First Law, for did He not make the beasts before He made humans?

But God holds humans to a higher standard. He charges us to be the good shepherds of His Earth, and not to abuse His Creation. We are meant to live in harmony with His Creation, but in Tonga there is an undeclared war between humans and canines; it is a war neither side can win because no more than the canines, the humans have no strategy. Despite all of the kindness we have shown them, our dogs have learned to fear strangers, and it can only be because strangers give them cause to fear.

What we do need is for those who have the respect of the community, whether they are clergy or nobles, to speak out against the violence that is systemic in Tongan society. The deplorable phenomena of high school alumni gangs brawling in the streets, wife and child beating in the homes, and young children and old women casting stones at dogs, are all related. Violence only begets more violence. How is it that a professed Christian kingdom does not know that? How can they not know the love of the most loyal and faithful of species and claim to know the love of Jesus?
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated. 
I hold that the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.
--Mohandas Gandhi
Thomas Gangale's Tales of Tonga

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