An Unpublished Lennox Family Interview
By Save Lennox On November 26, 2010
We have all read by now the many newspaper, magazine and various other publications over the months and also heard many radio and internet broadcasts regarding Lennox and the damage caused to this Family and especially the Families young Daughter Brooke since Lennox’s cruel and wrongful seizure by Belfast City Council, but recently the Family gave an in-depth interview to a leading magazine and unfortunately due to unavoidable deadlines and editorial space granted for the article the full interview was not published. The Family have requested that the questions asked and the answers they gave in the interview that remain as yet unpublished be published onto the Save Lennox Campaign Blog because it demonstrates just how they emotionally feel about many aspects of their ordeal and how they feel about the supporters and campaigners that have joined them in their campaign to save Lennox and many like him. Below are the unpublished magazine questions asked by the reporter and the Families unedited answers.
Reporter’s Questions:
1. Can you describe how you felt when the police and dog wardens took Lennox away?
At first it had not sunk in what had just happened, you see these Belfast City Council Dog Wardens came to our home with the Police, we brought them into our home then they issued the warrant to us. After some conversation with the dog wardens one of the three dog wardens went outside our home and told the Police they could leave as they were not required. Once all the dog wardens were gathered in my kitchen I offered Tea to them, which they took, the dog wardens asked if they could smoke, which they did and they played with our other Family dogs and Foster dog, shortly after they became quite serious and began speaking about Lennox. The polite people whom we let into our home were now not so kind and indeed quite serious telling me they were taking my dog! I couldn’t understand, why? what had he done? When we brought Lennox into our kitchen so that the dog wardens could measure him with their dress makers tape measure Lennox simply wanted to get away from them so he tried his best to sit on my lap and he rested his head on my shoulder, as if he was a little child begging to be cuddled, little did our Family know that shortly after we would no longer see our beautiful gentle boy again. We led Lennox by his leash out of our home then one of the female wardens snatched the leash from me and gestured Lennox in the direction of their caged van. Lennox always loved getting out in the car so wagging his tail he complied with the female dog warden and jumped into the side door of the council van where the other two dog wardens from Belfast City Council pushed him into a tiny cage and locked it. At that very moment my heart broke and I went to pieces, I had just realised this wasn’t a joke, these people have taken our Family pet, our dog, our Daughters best friend to be put to death. What would I tell our Daughter? The tears began streaming uncontrollably from my eyes and I turned to my partner for comfort and noticed that my tower of strength, the one I always turn to for support, he to was crying.
2. In our telephone conversation I think you said something about the government crying out for responsible dog owners, but can’t remember the full quote, could you expand on it?
Many dog shelters who are over crowded with lost souls, little dogs, large dogs all crying out for a home, just a place they can lay their heads and feel the love from a human, to be part of a family once again and those lucky dogs that already have what so many long for are the ones that the Council Wardens and the Government are seen to be targeting simply to make their targets look good. The RSPCA, USPCA all have kennels bursting with poor dogs in need of a kind loving home and many unfortunately will never find such yet the Council Wardens and the Government take the responsible dog owners to court when they have done no wrong except love, care and provide a stable home for their dogs. The Council dog wardens and the Government need to stop using the responsible dog owner as an easy target just to make their figures look good, the Councils need to understand that people , like ourselves, who have been responsible dog owners all their life, owned many various breeds and who spend thousands on their beloved companions will simply cease doing the lawful thing by licensing their dogs with council authorities simply because when people and families like ourselves do the lawful and correct thing and licence their dogs with council’s you still have your dog seized and sentenced to death. I have licensed all my dogs every year without fail and I recently found out that had we not licensed Lennox then the council would never have known about him and so he would still be at home with us now curled up in front of the fire and not laying in some unknown cold concrete council kennel somewhere. The authorities across the UK and Northern Ireland need to pay attention to the thugs who are using dogs as trophy dogs and fighting dogs and stop targeting the normal, responsible dog owner. How can any person be a responsible lawful dog owner if the Council and other authorities continually target them for being just that? The government brought in the Breed Specific Legislation, everyone knows it doesn’t work, it clearly isn’t working, it’s unfair and flawed in so many ways. Since the introduction of BSL dog attacks have continued to sore, BSL hasn’t made any difference except MURDER innocent family pets and destroy families in the process. At a time when the Government is making massive department cut backs across the United Kingdom many councils, including Belfast City Council are throwing vast amounts of tax payers money at dog related court cases with one aim, to secure a prosecution on a responsible dog owner and to sentence many innocent dogs to death simply because of how they look, Justice? I think not! Those MP’s, MLA’s and Councillors in Northern Ireland and UK who can stop this, who can make a difference, those are the people who should be ashamed of themselves ignoring the calls to end this pathetic legislation, ignoring the people who voted to put them in their positions of power. It never ceases to amaze us how these MP’s will come to your door just before an election, promise you the world to get your vote and then after the elections they don’t want to know or help, this is especially evident in Northern Ireland.
3. Would it be possible to give me a short quote about the support you’ve received?
Where do I start? It wouldn’t be possible or fair to sum up our support in a quote. Our family and the Save Lennox Campaign don’t have supporters, when Lennox was wrongfully taken we gained hundreds of thousands of new friends! our supporters are like Family, true kind hearted people who have decided enough is enough, we wont take this from the Government and the Council’s any longer. The support we have received is so hard to explain, honestly? there hasn’t been a word invented or entered into the English Dictionary to explain the love we feel for these people. Our supporters are normal every day people, not necessarily dog owners or dog lovers like many would expect, many of our supporters from around the globe are also people who don’t own a dog but are compassionate people who know what has happened to Lennox and our Family is clearly outright wrong and cruel! We receive around two hundred emails each day which does take sometime to get through and is also difficult to always reply to all but if it wasn’t for these wonderful people emailing us with words of support or helpful information then I really don’t know how we could carry on, these kind people have been a tower of strength to us since this ordeal began and especially for our Daughter as she also receives many emails from supporters sending their love and their promises that they will never give up until she is reunited with her best friend Lennox. It simply melts our hearts that so many people have taken Lennox into their hearts and now consider Lennox to also be their dog, which in a sense he now is. We wish we could reach out and hug each and every person who has helped in our campaign and who continue to support our cause. When we started this Campaign to Save Lennox and to raise awareness of the deeds being carried out by Belfast City Council and other authorities we never thought for a moment that this campaign and Lennox’s story would affect so many people, even now we cannot begin to realise just how many people from around the world support Lennox’s fight for life and I don’t think we will ever actually become to understand the huge amount of people who follow his story. At the start of our campaign, just days after Lennox was taken from our loving Family home, we reached out asking for support for our cause, our kind supporters reached back with their hearts of gold and open arms and have never left our sides since! We love them all.
4. How much would it mean to you and your family to have Lennox back at his home?
Do you remember the feeling you got late on Christmas eve night when you were a little child, laying in bed trying to go asleep? that feeling of excitement, anxiety and joy because you knew once you awoken from a sleep that all the things you wanted would be there waiting for you delivered by Santa Claus? If you capture that feeling and think carefully, very carefully and remember that feeling… that is how we would feel to have Lennox back at home. Having Lennox back home would be amazing especially for our Daughter who is registered disabled and who grew up with Lennox. The feeling of separation our twelve year old Daughter is going through is not helping her already complicated illness, a little innocent child shouldn’t have to experience these emotions or feelings at such an early age. Our Daughters specialist Doctor has even raised concerns with us that this separation from her dog is now beginning to have effects on our Daughter both mentally and physically and all this caused by three Belfast City Council dog wardens and an evil, evil law. To have Lennox back at home would end this nightmare, it would be a celebration for all the hard work carried out by our supporters and would hopefully stop any other family suffering the pain we are experiencing right now. The people who make these laws and those who arrive at your door step and rip your innocent family pet from you, they don’t see the destruction they cause behind the scenes, they don’t stop for a moment and consider what effect their actions will have on a family, a child and a poor innocent dog itself, these same people must be held accountable for what they are doing.
5. Do you intend to continue to campaign for an end to BSL?
To be totally honest, when we started our campaign to Save Lennox we had one intention and one only, to save Lennox and get him home. However because of the campaign we started, the followers, supporters, the Friends we gained through our various websites and networks we found other people in different parts of the world who are also suffering due to BSL. We even receive emails almost every day from people asking if we can help them spread their story of their seized dog and if we can put them in touch with the right people, which we try our best to do. At the start of this ordeal we had never even heard about BSL, it could have been a short terminology for a sandwich for all we knew! :) but when we contacted various dog groups asking for help we soon realised that it wasn’t just ourselves suffering and BSL doesn’t just affect Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, Europe but many other countries and around that time we had a significant amount of supporters so my partner and myself sat down one night and discussed what we could do to also help others, how we could help spread the word about this evil legislation and we decided almost immediately that we would fight long and hard for Lennox and in doing so we would do what we could to raise awareness of others suffering due to BSL. Soon after, our supporters numbers grew further it became apparent that win or lose our fight for Lennox that we couldn’t simply roll over and stop our campaigning we would have to carry on to help put an end to BSL and help others suffering. So we have decided that once we secure a hopefully happy outcome for Lennox we will change the name of our main Save Lennox website and do all we can to help others by putting them in contact with the right groups, legal teams and campaigners and off course we hope all of Lennox’s kind supporters, our Friends will continue to help us fight to put death to BSL and not allow BSL to put death to another dog! BSL is just some fancy terminology the Government give to genocide, dress it up a little, call it what you want but it’s basically a way for Government and authorities to wreck Family lives and Murder Family pets and by giving it a fancy term is their way to try to fool the voting public into believing its right so they can continue and get away with it, so off course we will continue to fight, we wont stop until those people in power listen and end this barbaric law.
By Save Lennox On November 26, 2010
We have all read by now the many newspaper, magazine and various other publications over the months and also heard many radio and internet broadcasts regarding Lennox and the damage caused to this Family and especially the Families young Daughter Brooke since Lennox’s cruel and wrongful seizure by Belfast City Council, but recently the Family gave an in-depth interview to a leading magazine and unfortunately due to unavoidable deadlines and editorial space granted for the article the full interview was not published. The Family have requested that the questions asked and the answers they gave in the interview that remain as yet unpublished be published onto the Save Lennox Campaign Blog because it demonstrates just how they emotionally feel about many aspects of their ordeal and how they feel about the supporters and campaigners that have joined them in their campaign to save Lennox and many like him. Below are the unpublished magazine questions asked by the reporter and the Families unedited answers.
Reporter’s Questions:
1. Can you describe how you felt when the police and dog wardens took Lennox away?
At first it had not sunk in what had just happened, you see these Belfast City Council Dog Wardens came to our home with the Police, we brought them into our home then they issued the warrant to us. After some conversation with the dog wardens one of the three dog wardens went outside our home and told the Police they could leave as they were not required. Once all the dog wardens were gathered in my kitchen I offered Tea to them, which they took, the dog wardens asked if they could smoke, which they did and they played with our other Family dogs and Foster dog, shortly after they became quite serious and began speaking about Lennox. The polite people whom we let into our home were now not so kind and indeed quite serious telling me they were taking my dog! I couldn’t understand, why? what had he done? When we brought Lennox into our kitchen so that the dog wardens could measure him with their dress makers tape measure Lennox simply wanted to get away from them so he tried his best to sit on my lap and he rested his head on my shoulder, as if he was a little child begging to be cuddled, little did our Family know that shortly after we would no longer see our beautiful gentle boy again. We led Lennox by his leash out of our home then one of the female wardens snatched the leash from me and gestured Lennox in the direction of their caged van. Lennox always loved getting out in the car so wagging his tail he complied with the female dog warden and jumped into the side door of the council van where the other two dog wardens from Belfast City Council pushed him into a tiny cage and locked it. At that very moment my heart broke and I went to pieces, I had just realised this wasn’t a joke, these people have taken our Family pet, our dog, our Daughters best friend to be put to death. What would I tell our Daughter? The tears began streaming uncontrollably from my eyes and I turned to my partner for comfort and noticed that my tower of strength, the one I always turn to for support, he to was crying.
2. In our telephone conversation I think you said something about the government crying out for responsible dog owners, but can’t remember the full quote, could you expand on it?
Many dog shelters who are over crowded with lost souls, little dogs, large dogs all crying out for a home, just a place they can lay their heads and feel the love from a human, to be part of a family once again and those lucky dogs that already have what so many long for are the ones that the Council Wardens and the Government are seen to be targeting simply to make their targets look good. The RSPCA, USPCA all have kennels bursting with poor dogs in need of a kind loving home and many unfortunately will never find such yet the Council Wardens and the Government take the responsible dog owners to court when they have done no wrong except love, care and provide a stable home for their dogs. The Council dog wardens and the Government need to stop using the responsible dog owner as an easy target just to make their figures look good, the Councils need to understand that people , like ourselves, who have been responsible dog owners all their life, owned many various breeds and who spend thousands on their beloved companions will simply cease doing the lawful thing by licensing their dogs with council authorities simply because when people and families like ourselves do the lawful and correct thing and licence their dogs with council’s you still have your dog seized and sentenced to death. I have licensed all my dogs every year without fail and I recently found out that had we not licensed Lennox then the council would never have known about him and so he would still be at home with us now curled up in front of the fire and not laying in some unknown cold concrete council kennel somewhere. The authorities across the UK and Northern Ireland need to pay attention to the thugs who are using dogs as trophy dogs and fighting dogs and stop targeting the normal, responsible dog owner. How can any person be a responsible lawful dog owner if the Council and other authorities continually target them for being just that? The government brought in the Breed Specific Legislation, everyone knows it doesn’t work, it clearly isn’t working, it’s unfair and flawed in so many ways. Since the introduction of BSL dog attacks have continued to sore, BSL hasn’t made any difference except MURDER innocent family pets and destroy families in the process. At a time when the Government is making massive department cut backs across the United Kingdom many councils, including Belfast City Council are throwing vast amounts of tax payers money at dog related court cases with one aim, to secure a prosecution on a responsible dog owner and to sentence many innocent dogs to death simply because of how they look, Justice? I think not! Those MP’s, MLA’s and Councillors in Northern Ireland and UK who can stop this, who can make a difference, those are the people who should be ashamed of themselves ignoring the calls to end this pathetic legislation, ignoring the people who voted to put them in their positions of power. It never ceases to amaze us how these MP’s will come to your door just before an election, promise you the world to get your vote and then after the elections they don’t want to know or help, this is especially evident in Northern Ireland.
3. Would it be possible to give me a short quote about the support you’ve received?
Where do I start? It wouldn’t be possible or fair to sum up our support in a quote. Our family and the Save Lennox Campaign don’t have supporters, when Lennox was wrongfully taken we gained hundreds of thousands of new friends! our supporters are like Family, true kind hearted people who have decided enough is enough, we wont take this from the Government and the Council’s any longer. The support we have received is so hard to explain, honestly? there hasn’t been a word invented or entered into the English Dictionary to explain the love we feel for these people. Our supporters are normal every day people, not necessarily dog owners or dog lovers like many would expect, many of our supporters from around the globe are also people who don’t own a dog but are compassionate people who know what has happened to Lennox and our Family is clearly outright wrong and cruel! We receive around two hundred emails each day which does take sometime to get through and is also difficult to always reply to all but if it wasn’t for these wonderful people emailing us with words of support or helpful information then I really don’t know how we could carry on, these kind people have been a tower of strength to us since this ordeal began and especially for our Daughter as she also receives many emails from supporters sending their love and their promises that they will never give up until she is reunited with her best friend Lennox. It simply melts our hearts that so many people have taken Lennox into their hearts and now consider Lennox to also be their dog, which in a sense he now is. We wish we could reach out and hug each and every person who has helped in our campaign and who continue to support our cause. When we started this Campaign to Save Lennox and to raise awareness of the deeds being carried out by Belfast City Council and other authorities we never thought for a moment that this campaign and Lennox’s story would affect so many people, even now we cannot begin to realise just how many people from around the world support Lennox’s fight for life and I don’t think we will ever actually become to understand the huge amount of people who follow his story. At the start of our campaign, just days after Lennox was taken from our loving Family home, we reached out asking for support for our cause, our kind supporters reached back with their hearts of gold and open arms and have never left our sides since! We love them all.
4. How much would it mean to you and your family to have Lennox back at his home?
Do you remember the feeling you got late on Christmas eve night when you were a little child, laying in bed trying to go asleep? that feeling of excitement, anxiety and joy because you knew once you awoken from a sleep that all the things you wanted would be there waiting for you delivered by Santa Claus? If you capture that feeling and think carefully, very carefully and remember that feeling… that is how we would feel to have Lennox back at home. Having Lennox back home would be amazing especially for our Daughter who is registered disabled and who grew up with Lennox. The feeling of separation our twelve year old Daughter is going through is not helping her already complicated illness, a little innocent child shouldn’t have to experience these emotions or feelings at such an early age. Our Daughters specialist Doctor has even raised concerns with us that this separation from her dog is now beginning to have effects on our Daughter both mentally and physically and all this caused by three Belfast City Council dog wardens and an evil, evil law. To have Lennox back at home would end this nightmare, it would be a celebration for all the hard work carried out by our supporters and would hopefully stop any other family suffering the pain we are experiencing right now. The people who make these laws and those who arrive at your door step and rip your innocent family pet from you, they don’t see the destruction they cause behind the scenes, they don’t stop for a moment and consider what effect their actions will have on a family, a child and a poor innocent dog itself, these same people must be held accountable for what they are doing.
5. Do you intend to continue to campaign for an end to BSL?
To be totally honest, when we started our campaign to Save Lennox we had one intention and one only, to save Lennox and get him home. However because of the campaign we started, the followers, supporters, the Friends we gained through our various websites and networks we found other people in different parts of the world who are also suffering due to BSL. We even receive emails almost every day from people asking if we can help them spread their story of their seized dog and if we can put them in touch with the right people, which we try our best to do. At the start of this ordeal we had never even heard about BSL, it could have been a short terminology for a sandwich for all we knew! :) but when we contacted various dog groups asking for help we soon realised that it wasn’t just ourselves suffering and BSL doesn’t just affect Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, Europe but many other countries and around that time we had a significant amount of supporters so my partner and myself sat down one night and discussed what we could do to also help others, how we could help spread the word about this evil legislation and we decided almost immediately that we would fight long and hard for Lennox and in doing so we would do what we could to raise awareness of others suffering due to BSL. Soon after, our supporters numbers grew further it became apparent that win or lose our fight for Lennox that we couldn’t simply roll over and stop our campaigning we would have to carry on to help put an end to BSL and help others suffering. So we have decided that once we secure a hopefully happy outcome for Lennox we will change the name of our main Save Lennox website and do all we can to help others by putting them in contact with the right groups, legal teams and campaigners and off course we hope all of Lennox’s kind supporters, our Friends will continue to help us fight to put death to BSL and not allow BSL to put death to another dog! BSL is just some fancy terminology the Government give to genocide, dress it up a little, call it what you want but it’s basically a way for Government and authorities to wreck Family lives and Murder Family pets and by giving it a fancy term is their way to try to fool the voting public into believing its right so they can continue and get away with it, so off course we will continue to fight, we wont stop until those people in power listen and end this barbaric law.
