Gone To The Dogs: Tales of a Dog Napper

By Kate Moore

The law describes author Kate Moore as a dog thief. She’s stolen more than three hundred and fifty dogs throughout a period of five years. It’s possible she’s stolen more dogs than anyone else in Canada and possibly North America. But she doesn’t think of herself as a thief, and she doesn’t feel like one. Moore sees herself as a dog rescuer, one who rescues abused and neglected dogs who suffer at the hands of their owners.

In Gone to the Dogs, Moore describes her rescue/theft of dozens of abused and neglected, chained, penned, and cruelly confined dogs that the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) refused to help despite their suffering. Each chapter about the rescue of a suffering dog alternates with chapters about Moore’s journey through the court system, starting with her arrest and ending with her sentencing two years later.

This memoir reveals that rescue isn’t something you dabble in; it consumes your life. It’s stressful and emotionally and financially draining. But the rewards of watching formerly terrified and traumatized dogs shed their fears and blossom into joyful, confident, and loving beings makes every moment worth it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: May 6, 2025
• ISBN: 9781665773911

Kate Moore

Kate Moore is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Radium Girls, which won the 2017 Goodreads Choice Award for Best History, was voted U.S. librarians’ favorite nonfiction book of 2017,and was named a Notable Nonfiction Book of 2018 by the American Library Association. A British writer based in London, Kate writes across a variety of genres and has had multiple titles on the Sunday Times bestseller list. She is passionate about politics, storytelling, and resurrecting forgotten heroes.

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Copyright © 2025 Kate Moore.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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ISBN: 978-1-6657-7390-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-7392-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-7391-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2025904414

Archway Publishing rev. date:  04/29/2025

Contents

Disclaimer

Introduction

Chapter 1 Failing Bubba

Chapter 2 Arrested

Chapter 3 Finnegan

Chapter 4 Jail

Chapter 5 Rupert

Chapter 6 Released

Chapter 7 Ruby

Chapter 8 Stanley—Part 1

Chapter 9 Balcony Dog

Chapter 10 Arrested Again

Chapter 11 Threading a Needle

Chapter 12 Slander

Chapter 13 A Battle of Wills

Chapter 14 A Tip About A Tip

Chapter 15 Winston

Chapter 16 Stanley—Part 2

Chapter 17 Bob Marley—Part 1

Chapter 18 More Arrests

Chapter 19 Bob Marley—Part 2

Chapter 20 The Tormentor

Chapter 21 Mira

Chapter 22 Cora

Chapter 23 Chance—Part 1

Chapter 24 Difficult Dan

Chapter 25 Chance—Part 2

Chapter 26 The Assault

Chapter 27 Saving Grace

Chapter 28 Despicable Dan

Chapter 29 Samantha

Chapter 30 Losing Ben

Chapter 31 Alfie

Chapter 32 Disclosure

Chapter 33 A Divine Rescue

Chapter 34 Arrested Again

Chapter 35 Fern and Ghost

Chapter 36 Hell Week

Chapter 37 Getting Lucky

Chapter 38 Sentenced

Epilogue

Disclaimer

Every detail in this book about the rescue and rehoming of abused and neglected dogs is true. Also true are the actions of the police and Crown counsel. But because the author is admitting to criminal activities, to help ensure that none of the information contained could be used as evidence against her and her fellow rescuers, all the names of the rescuers, volunteers, fosters, and adopters involved have been changed. In addition, the names of the liberated dogs have been changed to ensure their protection as well.

Also changed are the names of any cities in which a dog was rescued. And to protect the rescue organization, it has only been referred to it as the Rescue.

The entire proceeds of this book and any donations generated by it will go directly to support the Rescue.

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can

be judged by the way 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.

Mahatma Gandhi

If dogs don’t go to heaven, then I want to go where they went.

Will Rogers

Dogs are the only beings who think we are perfect just the way

we are. They love us even if we lose our jobs, gain twenty pounds,

or haven’t showered for three days—probably especially then.

Kate Moore

It can’t be hell if there are dogs there, and

it can’t be heaven without them.

Kate Moore

Introduction

I am a dog thief. At least that is how I am described by the law. I have stolen more than three hundred and fifty dogs over a period of five years. It is possible that I have stolen more dogs than anyone else in Canada and possibly North America. But I don’t think of myself as a thief, and I certainly don’t feel like one. And neither do the dozen other dog thieves I am honored to have known and worked alongside.

We are, and always refer to ourselves as, dog rescuers. We rescue abused and neglected dogs who suffer at the hands of their owners—dogs that have been starved, beaten, or cruelly confined, dogs who have been physically or emotionally tormented by living permanently inside pens, sheds, garages, closets, attics, or crates or on the end of chains. We do this because the SPCA cannot or will not help them.

Never once when I removed a dog from a life of misery did I feel like a criminal. In fact, nothing that I have done in my life before or since has felt more important—or right. Throughout this book, I will rarely refer to the act of removing a dog from the yard of an abusive owner as theft or describe the dogs as stolen. On the rare occasions I do, it is usually to distinguish them from the more than three thousand legitimately acquired homeless dogs that my fellow rescuers and I have saved and placed in loving homes.

The animal cruelty laws in Canada are so weak that only animals experiencing such severe abuse or neglect that they are on the verge of death can be seized for cruelty. What little animal rights legislation that exists falls under property law—which is why two teenage boys who skinned a cat alive and videotaped it so they could relive their cruelty later were never charged with a crime. The cat was a stray and so, because she was no one’s property, had no rights and no protection from cruelty under the law.

Animals in Canada have essentially the same rights as your toaster. It is perfectly legal to put an eight-week old puppy on a chain and keep her there for the entirety of her life. She could spend every minute of her life never moving beyond the length of her chain, never knowing the joy of running free or chasing a ball, never experiencing being a part of a family or even the touch of a human hand. As long as she is kept alive by providing her with food, water, and shelter, no SPCA cruelty investigation officer will do anything to end her suffering.

The organization whose stated purpose is to prevent cruelty to animals, in reality, has little will to do so. This is why private rescue organizations exist and why so many of them take the law into their own hands. Animal rescuers know well that they are often the only hope for a suffering animal. Our compassion compels us to risk imprisonment. Rescuing animals is not a choice for us. It is our purpose, our passion, and our mission.

We don’t see ourselves as different from others in our concern about the cruel treatment of animals. When faced with an animal in distress, we believe most people would feel compelled to take action to help them. But to liberate an animal that is suffering at the hands of their owners usually means risking jail. Compare this to taking the same actions to relieve the suffering of a child. If a child is beaten or starved or kept outside in freezing temperatures or scorching heat, confined to a pen or chained to a tree, not only would it be legal to rescue them, it would be morally and legally wrong not to. This huge disparity between the rights of animals and the rights of humans to be protected from suffering is not based on a proportionate disparity in their ability to experience pain. We are well aware that animals experience pain as intensely, both physically and emotionally, as humans do. Animals don’t have their rights protected by law for one reason and one reason only—they can’t fight for them.

It is rare in human history that people have fought for the rights of others; few white people were active in civil rights demonstrations, few men have stood beside women in their fight for equal rights, and few heterosexuals have joined in gay and lesbian marches. It is a sad aspect of human nature that we are rarely interested in anyone else’s rights but our own. In fact, it is far more common for us to resist another group’s fight to have their rights protected by law in a misguided belief that our own rights will consequently be diminished.

So it is therefore no surprise that animals, who are unable to fight for their own rights, have so few. They must rely on us to fight for them. And so far, we have failed them miserably.

As with any passion, animal activism has been the source of my greatest joy and my deepest torment. When in the depths of sorrow, I have often found myself envying people whose hearts do not ache for a suffering animal. How peaceful it must be to lie in bed every night and not be tormented by a dog you know who is being starved and whose body aches for food, or a dog who is licking her wounds from the beating she gets every day, or of a chained dog whose unrelenting loneliness is harder to bear than even hunger or abuse. My fellow rescuers and I are haunted by their suffering.

Rescuers are often called obsessed, and perhaps that is true. Dog rescue certainly consumes me. It is rare that I will go more than an hour at a time without being involved with one aspect or another of dog rescue. This is true for every rescuer I have ever known. Rescue isn’t something you dabble in; it takes over your life. It is intensely stressful and emotionally and financially draining. But the rewards of watching formerly terrified and traumatized dogs shed their fears and blossom into joyful, confident, and loving beings, with little more effort than treating them with the respect and care they have always deserved, makes every tearful, tormented moment worth it.

But nothing would please animal rescuers more than not to be needed - to be out of business because there are no more suffering or homeless animals. A society that is as outraged by cruelty to animals as we are is our deepest desire. We would happily take back the lives we had before rescue took them over. I used to garden and sculpt. Since rescue found me, my garden has been lost to buttercup, and my kiln is covered in dust.

As one animal rescuer aptly stated, Rescue is losing your mind and finding your soul.

Black and white image of a fluffy, long-haired dog with a happy expression, tongue out. The close-up conveys warmth and friendliness. Chapter 1

Failing Bubba

The phone call that changed my life came at 8:52 am on a bitterly cold late December morning. When I saw who was calling, my heart jumped into my throat. I had a feeling I was about to find out that I was responsible for the death of a dog. I couldn’t bear to pick up the phone, and for one cowardly moment, I considered letting it go to voicemail. But if my greatest fear was about to come true, then I had already let an American bulldog down in the worst possible way. The least I could do now was face my well-deserved punishment.

Hi, Sandra, I said, sounding as defeated as I felt.

How dare you call yourself a rescue! she cried. You are no better than the SPCA. You were his only hope. Bubba … Sandra’s voice cracked, and she dissolved into tears. Bubba froze to death last night, she sobbed. You promised me you would save him!

All sensation drained from my body. I sat paralyzed, listening to Sandra’s wrenching sobs, staring into space as I imagined Bubba in his pathetic excuse for a doghouse, curled into a tight ball, trying to keep the minus twenty-five-degree temperature of the previous night from sucking all the life-sustaining heat from his body. Bulldogs cannot tolerate subzero temperatures. They have extremely short coats that can’t provide any protection from the cold, and their short muzzles are not long enough to warm cold air before it enters their lungs. They are one of the most common breeds to die from hypothermia.

Bubba was—had been—an outdoor dog that belonged to Sandra’s next-door neighbor. She had watched him spend every moment of his life for the previous three years living on the end of a chain. She knew he was depressed and lonely, but she also knew that it was not illegal to keep a dog permanently chained in Canada. And because Vancouver winters are typically mild, rarely going more than a few degrees below zero in the winters, she knew he wasn’t at great risk of freezing to death. It wasn’t until the bitterly cold winter of 2006/2007 that Sandra became very concerned about his survival. An Arctic air mass had settled over Vancouver for several days at the end of December, causing record cold temperatures. Sandra had seen Bubba shivering uncontrollably and huddling inside his decrepit doghouse and had heard him whining pathetically throughout the cold nights. Her pleas to his owners to bring Bubba inside had been ignored. So she’d called the SPCA, reporting him as a dog in great distress, confident that they would surely do something to help him.

But they didn’t. An officer had gone by and had advised the owners that the unheated doghouse was wholly inadequate to prevent hypothermia and that Bubba was at great risk of freezing to death. Nevertheless, the owners had refused to bring Bubba inside the home. Tragically, the law does not require that they do so. Unbelievably, it is not illegal in Canada to cause a dog to freeze to death. Even so, the SPCA has the power to seize dogs they believe are in distress or at risk of dying. The officer could have seized Bubba and returned him when the cold snap ended. But he didn’t.

Sandra was shocked and furious. Desperate to save Bubba’s life, she searched for rescue groups online, found our number, and called us.

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Our rescue organization was just in its infancy when we got Sandra’s call. I had started it only a few weeks earlier with Bonnie Symons, a dynamic thirty-something who took in and counselled troubled youth and who had five rescued dogs and numerous rescued cats. Bonnie was a rescuer to her core. We had met a few months earlier when we were both volunteering at a dog rescue organization based in North Vancouver, the largest and most established dog rescue in BC at the time. It was run almost single-handedly by June Starr, the matriarch of dog rescue in the Vancouver area. Bonnie had been volunteering for June for over a year by the time I joined, and she had participated in numerous liberations. She had been witness to atrocious abuse. But despite all the horrors she had seen, Bonnie had never lost her sense of humor; her dry wit often had me in stitches. She had a way of seeing the humor in almost every situation, a quality that I, with my more intense and serious temperament, very much appreciated.

After volunteering for a couple of months and seeing the rescue having to turn dogs away because its foster homes were full, I realized that the demand to take in homeless dogs was so great that another rescue group was desperately needed. I decided I wanted to start my own rescue and asked Bonnie if she wanted to join me. Not only did she, but she also got her best friend, Brenda Collier, a calm, unflappable stay-at-home mom to agree to foster for us. Brenda lived on a farm with a large home and barn and said she had the room to foster up to five dogs at a time. And so the Rescue that would change my life forever had begun.

With Bonnie agreeing to handle all adoptions, Brenda fostering, and me handling the intake of homeless dogs, we needed just one more person to maintain our website, post our dogs for adoption on various adoption sites, and respond to emails and direct them to the appropriate person. I knew just who to ask.

Cheryl Curtis was a petite, gray-haired, middle-aged grandmother whose love of animals had no equal. Despite poor health caused by years of battling emphysema, Cheryl was very active in the animal rights movement. She spent much of her time in front of her cherished Mac, spreading the word about animal abuses worldwide, signing hundreds of petitions, and writing letters to lawmakers demanding animal rights legislation. She also attended as many local animal rights protests as she could, which is how we met. PETA, of which both Cheryl and I were members, had organized protests at numerous KFC restaurants because of their abysmally poor welfare standards for the millions of chickens they slaughtered every year. The local PETA representative, Ashley Franks, had asked me if I could pick Cheryl up and bring her to an upcoming protest with me. I happily agreed, and Cheryl and I have been the best of friends ever since.

Despite her feeble appearance, Cheryl had an inner strength and outward gruffness more suited to a member of a bike gang. She didn’t take shit from anyone, including me, could be crotchety and very stubborn, and had no reservations about letting you know exactly what she thought of you. And she would do absolutely anything for animals.

It wasn’t until years later that I would fully understand the depth of Cheryl’s compassion. I knew she donated to several animal welfare organizations every month despite living on a small disability pension. What I didn’t know was that making those donations had meant that she’d had to go without food a couple of days a month. She had never said anything, knowing I would insist on paying for her food for those days. Cheryl didn’t even want me spending money on food for her, money that would therefore not be available to help animals. This incredible woman has a heart so big that she was literally willing to suffer to help ensure animals wouldn’t. I was humbled by this tiny, frail, iron-willed woman’s enormous compassion.

Both Bonnie and Cheryl had been animal activists for most of their adult lives. That was not true for me. Up until my midforties, my career as an airline pilot had taken up most of my time and attention. It is still a challenge today being a woman in the male-dominated field of aviation; it was considerably tougher when I began my flying career in the late seventies. Just getting into and successfully through the aviation program at Seneca College in Toronto had been an enormous challenge. Of the twenty-five hundred people who applied each year, only one hundred and fifty were accepted into the first year of the three-year program. The initial selection process was simple; everyone had to complete a two-hour math exam, and the one hundred and fifty applicants with the highest marks were chosen. I, one other woman, and one hundred and forty-eight men were picked to enter the purely academic first year, whose purpose was to further eliminate another one hundred and twenty of us.

This time, the selection process was more exhaustive. High marks were still a major factor, but we were also evaluated by our performance in a flight simulator, a psychological assessment, and an interview by a panel of three very stern looking men. I and twenty-nine men were picked to continue into the flying program. During the next two years, eight more pilots washed out, leaving twenty-two of us to graduate with a commercial pilot’s license and a multi-engine instrument rating. Of those twenty-two, one pilot was selected by the instructors to win the award as the top graduate.

The program was run by ex-military pilots, and they ran it like the military; it was a very tough and rigorous program. Aside from carrying a full academic roster in the morning, including classes in chemistry, physics, electricity, mathematics, climatology, nutrition, aircraft structural engineering, aircraft instrumentation, and aviation regulations, every afternoon also included an hour of flying training in either a Cessna 172 or a twin-engine Cessna 310C and an hour session in a flight simulator. In addition, we had to maintain a level of physical fitness that would enable us to run a six-minute mile. Failing to run a mile in six minutes or less meant immediate elimination from the program. It didn’t matter to the instructors that a six-minute mile was a standard set for men; no accommodation was made for how much more difficult a six-minute mile was for a woman.

There were no summer breaks. While the academic classes were suspended from June through August, the flying and simulator lessons intensified. To make it through, every minute of spare time had to be devoted to studying. My social life disappeared. I forwent visits to the campus pub and even broke up with my boyfriend. I couldn’t afford to take time away from my studies to party or date. My life became an endless string of classes, flying, studying and running.

But my efforts and sacrifices paid off. I not only finished the program and managed, just barely, to run a six-minute mile, but I also graduated at the top of the class, winning the coveted Air Canada award, which included a job interview with Canada’s national air carrier. But even as the Chief Flying Instructor of the college was informing me that I had won the award, the first woman to have done so, he also told me that he didn’t think women belonged in aviation—an atta-girl with a slap to the face.

He wasn’t alone in his thinking. After graduating in 1980, I moved to BC where I had heard there were more flying jobs available than in Ontario. But I soon discovered they were largely only available to men. I found it impossible to get hired by a small airline or charter company. And employers weren’t even shy about letting me know it was because I was the wrong gender. The owner of a small flying charter based at the Abbotsford airport told me as I handed him my resume, which he didn’t even bother to look at, that the day he hired a woman, the moon would turn blue. He then promptly hired a young man who not only hadn’t gone to aviation college but who had a fraction of the flying hours I had and half the qualifications. He was hired just because he was male.

The only work I was able to find was as a flying instructor. Because I wanted to build my hours as fast as possible, I took on two instructing jobs at neighboring flying schools, working ten to twelve hour days, seven days a week. I barely had time to eat and sleep, let alone to think about volunteering.

There was no point in asking Air Canada to interview me until I had acquired all the qualifications and the minimum fifteen hundred hours they required to be hired. Because I had won the Air Canada award, they were obligated to interview me, but they weren’t obligated to hire me and most certainly wouldn’t as a newly graduated student with a mere three hundred hours of flying time. I also well understood that I would have to have twice the qualifications and flying experience as male applicants in order to have an equal chance of being hired. So I spent the next several years getting every license endorsement I could, flying as many different types of airplanes as possible, and building my flying time up to over five thousand hours.

Six years after I graduated, I had the experience and qualifications to meet Air Canada’s requirements for employment as a pilot. In addition, the airline had begun hiring pilots again after a five-year hiring freeze. So, in August 1986, I advised them that I would like to be interviewed. They promptly agreed and provided me with a return standby ticket from Vancouver to the company’s headquarters in Montreal.

The interview process was a daylong event and began with two hours of answering questions from a panel of four very intimidating senior flight managers. That was followed by a flight test in a DC9 simulator and a physical examination by the company doctor. I had been so nervous during the panel interview that I was afraid to let my personality come through. I answered their questions calmly and professionally—and very blandly. I was, in a word, dull. And, as I had never flown a jet aircraft before, which was true for the majority of applicants, I made some mistakes in the simulator. But I learned from them and didn’t repeat them—again, a competent but rather insipid performance. I neither embarrassed myself nor did anything to stand out. I was certain that the minute I left, I would have been completely forgotten.

And that certainly seemed to be the case. After I returned to my instructing jobs in Vancouver, I heard nothing from Air Canada the following week, or the next one, or the next. A month, then two went by with no call. While I waited in ever deepening despair, several of my male classmates were interviewed and hired. In fact, over the next few months, all of my classmates who applied for a job at Air Canada were hired—except for me.

I was certain that Air Canada had decided not to hire me. I suspected the reason was because of my gender; I had certainly experienced plenty of sexual discrimination throughout my aviation career not to believe otherwise. But it could also have been because of my lackluster performance at my interview. Whatever the reason, my hopes of becoming an airline pilot now rested entirely with Canadian Pacific airlines, the only other major airline in Canada at the time. I had sent them numerous resumes over the years, updating my qualifications and experience as they grew, just as I had with Air Canada. But they had not contacted me for an interview and, unlike Air Canada, were not obligated to give me one.

My dream of becoming an airline pilot was in free fall.

Then, ten months after my interview, on a sunny morning in early May 1987, I got a call at work from an Air Canada flight manager asking me if I still wanted a job with them. He said it just that casually—did I still want the job. I was momentarily speechless. I had been praying every day for ten months to get this call, had visualized it over and over. For just a moment, I was certain I was either imagining it or one of my friends was playing a cruel joke on me. When I realized neither was true and this really was Air Canada calling, I screamed my Yes! into the phone. I wanted there to be no doubt about my answer or my resolve.

That moment of realizing that my lifelong dream had just come true was one of the happiest of my life.

My joy at achieving my goal never wavered; not after learning I would be based in Toronto, over two thousand miles away from my boyfriend and fellow instructor, Tom Moore (I was certain we would find a way to be together again, and we did), not after learning that my initial pay would be less than I was making as a flying instructor, and not even after realizing I was only the seventh woman hired by Air Canada and that many male pilots were less than thrilled about sharing the cockpit with a female.

The most bizarre sexist remarks came from my first flight instructor on the Boeing 727 soon after I was hired. We were having coffee in the Toronto airport terminal while we waited for our next flight when he remarked that, of course, the only reason I had been hired was because I was a woman.

Now as you know, my experience as a woman in aviation had been exactly the opposite of being advantaged because of my gender. Even though he was technically my immediate superior, I was not about to let such an entirely false and absurd comment go unchallenged. Although the ignorant remark had angered me, I calmly advised him that at the time I was hired, I had five thousand hours flying time, more time than almost all of my male classmates had at the time they were hired by Air Canada, that I had been checked out on over fifteen different types of airplanes, had earned my airline transport rating with an average mark in the high eighties, had obtained a Class 1 instructor rating, an in-cloud teaching endorsement for multi-engine, IFR instruction, and was a designated flight test examiner. I also, still very calmly, mentioned that I had graduated at the top of my class, winning the Air Canada award and the job interview that I was certain I would never have received otherwise. I then informed him that although my qualifications far exceeded most of my male classmates, none of whom had won the award, they had all been hired before I had.

So, I asked him, are you suggesting that I didn’t need to bother with any of that and it was only because I have a vagina instead of a dick that Air Canada hired me to fly their airplanes?

Needless to say, my instructor was momentarily speechless. I took advantage of his loss for words to add one last bit of information.

Throughout the seven years since I graduated college, I have witnessed dozens of men with far fewer qualifications and hours than me get flying jobs I had also applied for. And they got them just because they were men. So the truth is that it is men, not women, who have had the benefit of affirmative action in aviation ever since aviation began.

My instructor had the good grace to look abashed and to apologize for his thoughtless comment. I immediately forgave him, and we continued my training with a much improved working relationship.

Once my training was successfully completed, I was approved to begin operating revenue flights. I was an airline pilot! It was everything I had dreamed it would be. I was thrilled by every takeoff, entranced by seeing the world from thirty-three thousand feet, and immensely relieved that each landing didn’t result in my killing everyone on board. With a few exceptions, I was treated with great respect and as if I was just one of the guys.

The exceptions were minor and even amusing. A few weeks after I began, a passenger, hearing that there was a female pilot on board, advised the flight attendant that he wanted to get off the plane, even though the door had already been closed and the bridge had been removed. The flight attendant made an announcement that the flight would be temporarily delayed to allow a passenger to deplane and gave the reason for his request to do so. I much appreciated the boos he received from the other passengers as he walked off the airplane.

The next and last sexist comment I received from a pilot came from a captain a few months later. He made it clear he was not happy about working with me by ignoring me during our flight planning and doing his best not to speak to me except when completely necessary during the first half of the flight. Tired of being treated as if I wasn’t there, I finally just came out and asked him what his problem was with me. He turned to me and said, It pisses me off that, with a woman in the cockpit, I can no longer swear if I want to.

I was shocked. This was not at all what I had expected to hear. And I couldn’t believe the absurdity of it. But at least he wasn’t complaining that he didn’t think women belonged in aviation or telling me I had only been hired because I was a woman. This was so ridiculous it was almost funny.

What the fuck! I said, pretending more indignation than I was feeling. You mean to say that you believe that your right to swear in the flight deck exceeds my right to have a job as a pilot? Are you fucking kidding me?

His face dropped, shocked by my outrage and my language. I have always sworn when angry. I had learned this trait from my petite, shy, socially awkward mother who swore like a trucker when she got mad. On the other hand, I had only heard my father swear once in his entire life, and it wasn’t until he was in his early eighties. After my mother died from Alzheimer’s years earlier, my elderly father had found himself a girlfriend. Dorothy was a tall, robust, and fiercely independent seventy-nine year old woman—the complete opposite of my mother—and she didn’t let my dad get away with any crap. She took him to task for his selfishness, challenged him if she thought he was being an idiot, and they fought frequently. But their passion was equally intense in the bedroom, much to my dad’s delight. One day when my husband, Tom, and I were visiting him, I overheard my father complaining to Tom about all the fights he and Dorothy had. I knew he didn’t realize I could hear him when he said, You have to ask yourself if the fucking you’re getting is worth the fucking you’re getting. Until that moment, I had never known my father to utter a fouler word than damn. But I now realized it wasn’t because he didn’t swear, but because he wouldn’t do it in front of his children, even as adults.

It seemed to dawn on the Captain how absurd it had been for him to worry about his language considering the mouth I had on me. I gave him a sly smirk, and he broke out laughing, which got me laughing as well. We had a good howl for the next several minutes, and the rest of our flight was spent engaged in lively and colorful conversation.

Within a few weeks of me being hired by Air Canada, Tom got hired by Air Canada’s feeder airline, Air BC. Since Tom was based in Vancouver and I in Toronto, the only way for us to continue a relationship was for one of us to commute. Since we both preferred living in Vancouver, I became the commuter. I flew standby from Toronto the day before my pairing began (a pairing is a series of flights over several days, anywhere from one to five days; a month of flying will typically include three to five pairings), flew for several days, then usually flew home back to Vancouver after my last flight landed in Toronto. I would get three, or if I was very lucky, four days at home, most of that spent recovering from chronic jet lag, before having to fly back for the next pairing. It was exhausting of course, but I didn’t care. I had my dream career, my dream man, and I lived in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Life was good—tiring but very, very good.

Tom and I met when I was still a flying instructor and he came in for flying lessons. He was tall, blond, had a beautiful, shy smile, and was one of the most handsome men I had ever seen. His initial training was completed by our chief flying instructor at the school, Gretchen Matheson. Gretchen was a beautiful and supremely competent and professional pilot and my hero. She had been bitten by the flying bug in 1950, a very tough time for women to be taken seriously in aviation. But her fearlessness and unfaltering composure quickly earned her the respect she deserved. By the time she hired me, she had been working as a flight instructor for over thirty years. And she would continue to do so well into her seventies. Gretchen had taught her parents to fly, her brother to fly, the man who would become her husband to fly, and their two daughters to fly.

And now she was teaching my future husband to fly.

Once Tom got his private pilot license, he was assigned to me for more advanced training to get his multi-engine and IFR ratings. Tom was the most natural pilot I have ever taught. I didn’t so much have to teach him as to simply tell him what exercise he needed to perform, then watch him do it, usually flawlessly, even if he was doing it for the very first time. When I gave him his first simulated engine failure in a twin-engine aircraft, he handled it perfectly. He was already, at the beginning of his training, ready to pass his multi-engine endorsement flight test. But aviation regulations require a minimum of five hours in a twin-engine aircraft before being qualified to take the flight test. Most people require around ten hours of training; Tom had it after one. So we filled the next four hours of training getting to know each other in the skies over the Fraser Valley as he perfectly handled engine failure after engine failure, as if he had been born to do them. Somewhere between the eighth and ninth engine failure, we realized we had fallen in love.

We would marry two years later on a warm, sunny afternoon in August under an oak tree in his father’s backyard. We planted an acorn from that oak in a large pot, nurtured it into a small tree, and finally planted it many years later in the backyard of our own home, where it stands today. Our wedding bands, designed by us, have the branches of an oak tree winding around it.

Our marriage would struggle through many hardships in the years to come, the worst being Tom’s growing problem with alcoholism, the second worst being my devotion to dog rescue. But the bond between us is still every bit as strong and enduring as the oak tree that shaded our wedding and the one that now shades our home.

Aviation is the kind of profession, like so many others, where those just starting out work the most while getting paid the least. Junior pilots get very unproductive flying schedules. To work the required number of flying hours each month, junior pilots need to work up to twice as many days as senior pilots. So for the first dozen years, I was typically away from home sixteen to eighteen days a month. I wasn’t bothered by that I loved my job. Going to work was like going on a holiday. I flew from one coast of North America to the other and loved every minute and every part of being an airline pilot.

The main downside was the time apart from Tom. However, these frequent days apart helped keep our marriage fresh and vital. We were either missing each other terribly or in a state of bliss being back together. During these early years, our days were filled with laughter, and it felt to us as if the honeymoon stage would last forever.

Another downside was the chronic jet lag. For the first two days after a trip, your body wants to do nothing more than catch up on all the sleep it has missed. Between the number of days away working and the number of days at home recovering from working, I was left with little time to consider volunteering. I satisfied my desire to help animals by donating regularly to numerous animal rights organizations.

It wasn’t until I became a senior overseas pilot in my late forties and began flying an average of nine to ten days a month that I had enough free time to be open to finding a cause, or to a cause finding me.

That happened on a warm, sunny Wednesday morning in May 2003. I had returned the previous evening from a flight to Beijing. When I awoke in the late morning, I uncharacteristically turned on the radio. I very rarely listened to the radio and have no idea why I decided to that day. But doing so that morning ended up changing my life forever.

There was a talk radio program on discussing Tina, a thirty-three year d Asian elephant who had been living at the Greater Vancouver Zoo for thirty years. Tina had become terribly depressed after the recent death of her long term companion, an African elephant she had spent most of her life with. She had also developed serious foot problems due to her years of captivity. An elephant sanctuary in Tennessee had offered to take her, but the zoo owners had decided instead to sell her to another zoo in Ontario, whose owner was well known for his physical abuse of elephants. This abusive man had been known to use whips, belts, and electric prods to terrorize his elephants into submission.

The public was outraged that the zoo would consider sending this shy, gentle, and lonely elephant to live out the rest of her years caged and chained and under the care of a known animal abuser instead of roaming free on two hundred acres in the company of other rescued elephants. Every caller was sickened by the decision. Every caller said something had to be done, but no one knew what to do.

Something inside me clicked into place. I was, of course, as outraged as everyone else. I hadn’t even known Vancouver had a zoo; as an animal lover, I couldn’t abide them. The only zoo I knew about had been a tiny one in Stanley Park that had closed years earlier after public outcry about a resident polar bear that had been driven insane by his lifelong captivity. I was shocked to learn that not only was there a very large zoo in nearby Abbotsford but that Tina and her elephant companion had been living there for thirty years—in the parking lot! They had been put there so people driving by would see them and be drawn inside. They were used as a living billboard.

Tina needed to be sent to the sanctuary and not another zoo. And for some reason, I felt responsible and determined to make that happen. I called the radio program, and while I waited to be put on the air, I thought about what I was going to say. The only thing I could think to do was to hold a protest. Never having done that before, I knew I would need several days to organize it. To maximize the number of people who could come, it needed to be on a weekend. But, as it was already Wednesday and only three days until Saturday, I decided the protest should take place the following Saturday, giving me plenty of time to contact local animal welfare groups and for them to spread the word to their members.

Once I got on the air, I announced that there was going to be a protest at the Greater Vancouver Zoo to demand Tina be sent to the elephant sanctuary in Tennessee and provided the date and time. As soon as I hung up, I heard the talk show host announce the details of the protest and ask that everyone in her audience attend. The next caller expressed great relief that someone was doing something to try to save Tina and said she would be at the protest with her family. The following caller also said he would come. I was thrilled that the news of the protest was being heard by thousands of listeners, dozens of whom would likely come, perhaps even a couple of hundred. Now all I had to do was organize it.

I would need to make a banner and dozens of posters as well as create a petition for people to sign. I needed to spread the word to local animal lovers and activists. But first I needed to advise the local newspapers and television stations. I called the two major Vancouver papers and left messages about the protest. I sent an email to the CTV news tip line. Then I called the hotline at Global BC News. When I told the receptionist why I was calling, I was put straight through to a reporter, who immediately threw me a curveball. He told me Tina was news now, but in ten days, when the protest was planned, she would be old news and of little interest to the media. This, he explained, was the harsh reality of news. If I wanted the protest to be of interest to the media, it needed to be held this coming Saturday, not the following one. That would leave me only two and a half days to organize it, spread the word, and make a banner and posters. But I had no choice; without the media covering it, the protest wouldn’t have much of an impact on the zoo’s owners.

Okay, I told him, the protest will be this Saturday.

In that case, he said, could we come out to your house within the next hour to do an interview?

Oh crap. I hadn’t yet showered or even gotten out of my pajamas. My house was a mess. There was no way I could be ready to do a television interview in an hour to talk about a protest that didn’t even exist yet.

Sure, that will be fine, I heard myself say and gave him my address.

Fortunately, the radio talk show discussing Tina was still on. I called back and got on the air again right away and told them the date of the protest was this coming Saturday at noon. And I asked everyone listening to please come out and bring as many people with them as possible.

I had just hung up the phone when it rang, showing a number from CTV News. This reporter was also very interested to learn about the protest. And she also asked if she could send out a crew to tape an interview with me. They would be at my home in just over an hour.

I couldn’t believe the response I was getting. At this point, I had not yet even seen Tom that morning. He had gotten up before me and was outside doing a repair to our fence. I ran outside and told him, Tom, two reporters and camera crew from CTV and Global News will be here in about an hour to tape me talking about a protest I am organizing to demand the Greater Vancouver Zoo send their sick elephant Tina to an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee. I have to shower and clean up the house. Can you greet them when they get here?

Tom was used to my spontaneous decisions to take on new hobbies and projects and to go from zero to sixty in less time than a Lamborghini. Nevertheless, this took him by considerable surprise. He turned to look at me, his jaw slack, his brow furrowed in confusion.

What?

I repeated what I had said, then excused myself to go and get ready, leaving Tom with a stunned look on his face. He told me later that he hadn’t believed me until the Global TV van drove up to the front of the house.

The interviews went well. I admitted that I didn’t belong to any local animal welfare organization and that I was just an animal lover who felt compelled to act to help an elephant who deserved a better life than a zoo. I didn’t, however, tell them that the protest was not yet a reality but was still little more than an idea. I gave the impression that hundreds of people had already agreed to come. I was relieved when the reporters left so I could get to work making those words come true.

The next two and a half days were a whirlwind of emails and phone calls to local animal welfare groups I had never known existed. I was a monthly donator to PETA in the US, so I contacted them and asked for a local contact. That was how I first met Ashley Franks. Ashley was a beautiful, slim vegan and a fierce and fearless animal rights activist. At the tender age of twenty-one, she was already a powerhouse of commitment and determination. Unlike me, Ashley had known almost from the moment she was born that her purpose was to help end animal suffering. I was just now, at the advanced age of forty-nine, finding myself on that path. I may have joined late, but I was going to make up for it by coming in at full speed.

Ashley said she would contact all PETA members in the area about the protest. Other local animal welfare organizations I contacted agreed to do so as well. I posted news of the protest in the pets section of Craigslist and got dozens of responses within minutes. I estimated that my projection of several hundred protestors would easily be met.

Next, I contacted the sanctuary in Tennessee to let them know about the protest. We discussed how fast they could make arrangements to transport Tina to Tennessee and what was required to make that happen. The permits could be fast-tracked, but the main stumbling block would be finding a trucker who would volunteer to drive Tina from Vancouver to Tennessee. But they would start working on that as soon as the zoo confirmed they would send Tina to them.

I never doubted the outcome. For the zoo to continue to insist on sending Tina to an abusive zoo instead of a caring sanctuary in the face of massive public outcry seemed inconceivable. What I didn’t expect was how fast the zoo would change their mind. On Wednesday night and all day Thursday, Tina’s sad story of a lifetime of captivity topped the news on every local channel. My interviews aired both days, with my prediction that the turnout of protesters was expected to be in the hundreds. The public outrage, bad press, and the threat of an embarrassing protest had the desired effect. On Friday morning, the zoo issued a press release stating that they would be sending Tina to the elephant sanctuary.

I was elated. Never have I felt such a sense of accomplishment. Even becoming an airline pilot paled in comparison. Nothing I had ever done in my life up to that moment had felt so important. I felt like I had finally found my true calling.

My career as an animal activist had taken off. It would be another three years before it landed in dog rescue.

For the next year and a half, Ashley, Cheryl, and I organized and attended many more animal rights protests. We began organizing monthly protests at the zoo, which we had learned, not surprisingly, was housing many of its other animals even more inhumanely than they had housed Tina. By far, the worst was a hippo named Hazina, who was living in a tiny storage shed that contained a small concrete bathtub that was barely big enough to contain her. Hazina spent most of her time in this tub, unable to move more than a couple of inches forward or back. The zoo was building her a new facility, but they were short on money, so progress was slow and would completely stall for months at a time. The media attention our protests received succeeded in getting animal cruelty charges laid against the zoo. But having nowhere to place her, the SPCA could not seize Hazina, and she was left to suffer in the tiny shed and tub for eighteen months until her new facility was finally finished. And because the zoo owners were deemed as not deliberately trying to inflict suffering on Hazina, the cruelty charges were dropped.

After a year of monthly rallies that resulted in no improvement in the lives of any of the zoo animals, we admitted defeat and stopped the protests.

Ashley, Cheryl, and I had also held protests at the local rodeo with a bit more success. We would buy tickets and wait with the other spectators for a particularly cruel event, then stand up with our banners, declaring the rodeo as nothing more than animal torture for entertainment. At one of our protests, a calf’s neck was broken during the calf roping event, a very common occurrence. The media attention we brought to the incident resulted in the mayor of the community banning calf roping several months later.

But despite this win, I soon became frustrated by the long hours protesting required for very meager results. I craved being involved in animal activism that had greater and more immediate results. And I selfishly wanted more direct contact with animals. So when Ashley gained a paid job with PETA and moved to their headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, I began helping out at a wildlife rehab center and a cat shelter. But it wasn’t until I began volunteering with the dog rescue organization that I knew I had found my place in animal activism. When Bonnie and I decided to start our own rescue, I asked Cheryl if she wanted to join us. She didn’t hesitate.

The first call came within hours of our website going public. A couple with a young shepherd/rottie cross named Norman was divorcing, and neither wanted to keep him and were too busy to try and find him a home themselves. I picked up Norman and drove him to Brenda’s farm. On the drive back home, I got another call from an elderly woman who had bought a lab puppy from a breeder and had quickly, although hardly surprisingly, determined that she couldn’t cope with his high energy demands. I picked up the young lab and took him to Brenda’s the following day. Two days later, I received a call about a border collie that had been abandoned and leashed to a park bench.

It was immediately clear that more fosters were going to be needed—and fast. We placed ads for foster homes in local community papers and made appeals on our website and on Craigslist. The offers to help poured in. Bonnie screened and home checked the foster applicants, and within a month, we had five more families willing to care for homeless dogs. The following month, we had four more. And they were filling up as fast as we got them. We got calls and emails asking us to take in all manner of homeless dogs—stray dogs, abandoned dogs, dogs that had been taken to vets to be euthanized simply because they were no longer wanted, dogs who just didn’t fit into their owner’s lifestyle anymore, dogs being dumped for any number of reasons. People were reluctant to take their own dogs, or dogs they had found, to the SPCA, knowing they would be housed in a wire cage, rarely if ever walked, and possibly euthanized if a behavioral problem made them difficult to adopt. There was no shortage of homeless dogs that needed our help.

Bubba was the first dog we were asked to rescue illegitimately.

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I spoke at length with Sandra the day she called to report Bubba, getting as much information about him and the situation as possible. She told me that she would try to go over and visit Bubba every day during the week when his owners were away at work. She would bring him treats—he especially loved peanut butter and crackers—and give him the attention he so desperately craved. She would often take his filthy, wet blanket home to wash and dry it. She had even bought him a chew toy, which he loved. Bubba would always greet Sandra with a wagging tail and an excited whine. But while he was friendly to her, Bubba would bark aggressively at strangers coming onto the property. In fact, that was Bubba’s entire purpose—to be a guard dog.

I promised Sandra that we would do our best to rescue Bubba and find him a wonderful home where he would never live outside again. I can still, many years later, remember how she had cried with relief and thanked me profusely for agreeing to save this dog she had come to think of as a friend.

As Bonnie was out of town visiting family for the holidays, I called a friend, Helen Chambers, who ran her own dog rescue organization and who had many years of experience liberating dogs from abusive homes. I told her what I knew about Bubba and asked if she could go with me that night to rescue him. Helen wisely pointed out that going at night was risky because of Bubba’s barking, and it would be better if we went during the day when his owners were gone. She also suggested that we go first to Sandra’s home and see if she would be willing to assist us in gaining Bubba’s trust. I reluctantly conceded that her plan had a far greater chance of success, and we agreed to rescue Bubba early the next morning. All Bubba had to do was survive one more bitterly cold night.

But he didn’t.

Sandra was still dumping her anger and frustration at me, alternating her accusations with heartbroken sobs. I felt anger welling inside of me as well—at the uselessness of the SPCA, at uncaring owners who don’t give a crap if their four-legged alarm system suffered or even froze to death (after all, they could just get another one free off of Craigslist). I was mad at Sandra too, for not having the guts to sneak Bubba inside her own home for the night, as I had suggested. But mostly, I was furious with myself. A dog had died because I had failed to act fast enough.

I didn’t try to explain or defend myself to Sandra. There was no defense. I believed then, as I do now, that I had a responsibility to save that dog. I had failed him terribly and in the worst possible way. I deserved every criticism she threw at me. Yes, of course, the owners were mostly to blame, as was the SPCA. But so was I because I had known and could have saved him. And in the knowing came the responsibility.

I felt myself sinking ever deeper into remorse. Guilt flooded in, twisting my stomach into knots and threatening to tear my heart in two. I found a brief moment of relief by shifting the blame to Helen for not wanting to attempt the rescue last night. But that made me