Roberta, a lawyer who often represents death row inmates, adopted her first Shih Tzu because the pup matched her home's decor. Six years and countless rescued dogs later, she's learned some incredible lessons about life and love from man's best friend.
Roberta's Story
"There's the dog."
In April 2000 I started formally doing Shih Tzu rescue. I was at my vet's and I happened to mention it to one of the vet techs. I contacted a woman they suggested and we got started. Our first rescue was pretty easy, but the second one, that's when you realize what rescue is all about. We go to the house and we're like, "Where's the dog?" And we see this thing, kind of wobbling across the front lawn, and they owners are -- I'll never forget -- this guy is laughing. He's like, "There's the dog." She didn't have 75 percent of her hair and she could barely walk. They had kept her outside for five years, no shelter, on a short leash, which is why she couldn't walk; her muscles had atrophied. She had a hernia, her tear ducts had stopped working. We were just in shock.
"My job is to love them, help them get their health back, socialize them, and get them a permanent home."
I could foster up to five a year. I cry if I have them three days or if I have them six months, because you do bond. They bring a lot of happiness to me, and even the ones I don't keep, which is obviously the bulk of them, just knowing they're going to a forever home and that person or people are so excited to get them. It's hard, but it's a good thing.
"It's just saving life."
I'm a law professor and I teach capital punishment. I also do capital defense work, trial, appellate, post conviction. I'm used to dealing with humans on death row, or where somebody's trying to put them on death row, as well as animals. I think the thing is it's saving life, the lives of different type of sentient beings. I've had dogs that I've saved where people have turned them in and said, "Well, they bite." They had one aggressive act and their life was going to be destroyed. When I actually start working with them, I see that maybe it was out of fear that they bit or some of them just have no manners. But it's just a matter of teaching them. That's like a lot of my clients. When they were children, they were never parented. Nobody taught them anything. Usually what they were taught was violence because that's what they saw at home and that's what they saw around them. I'm not saying people don't deserve to be punished, but you go into prison and you see so many young men, and when you start working with them, you realize they've never been parented, just like the problem dogs I deal with. They've never been trained, in some cases they've never been loved. If only somebody had taught them, "Here is how a human being acts." They're clueless and they're adults.
"Animals are very therapeutic."
I run an art program in a prison that also has a death row dog program, where they rescue dogs and bring them into the prison to be adopted out. I've seen how working with those animals has changed so many of the guys. Animals have a calming influence. You see these big old guys who murder people and they just melt. It's that unconditional love. Most of these guys have never been parented, never really been loved in an unconditional way, and these animals give them that. Once they learn that by experience, then they can start caring about other people because they know what it feels like to be loved. Then they understand loss, like, "God, if somebody hurt my dog, I'd be devastated. I'd be so hurt. Wow, when I did this to somebody, not only did it hurt them in the sense that it took their life, but their families and their friends." The dogs really instruct all of us on so many levels.
"They give me faith."
The work that I do with death row inmates can be defeating. You'll be like, "God, this motion is great," and then the court shoots it down. It can really beat you down. But then I come home and all these little guys run to the door, and they really give me faith again, like there is life. As long as there's life, there's hope. They really bring home that message.
