The shelter closed an hour ago. No Lucy today.
That means the county has now held her for at least a full week after I signed a deal I didn’t like, all because I convinced myself it was the fastest way to get her out.
Time was on my side. The prosecution’s case was becoming increasingly unpopular. Leaders of the Virginia GOP were reaching out. The dam was about to break. A little more time, I thought, and that popular outrage would be too much for the Commonwealth to keep pushing a case it should never have taken up in the first place.
But time wasn’t on Lucy’s side. She’s eleven years old. She had already been locked in that concrete kennel for seven long weeks. I had to get her out. That was the only thing that mattered.
It still hasn’t happened.
And tonight that leaves me sitting here, staring at the empty spot on the rug by the kitchen table where she should be curled up, wondering who the real enemy is in all this.
Is it the DA? No. Not personally. She’s just doing the job they pay her to do. She didn’t ask for this mess. In fact, she wrote the judge on Monday asking her to sign the order that would let Lucy come home.
Is it the neighbors? No. They’re not villains. They’re just sheep; mindless, easily spooked, moving in a mob that takes on the collective wisdom and virtue of its loudest, basest, and stupidest members. At the end of the day, they’re still sheep.
So who’s the wolf?
There isn’t one.
It’s something far worse than a wolf. It’s a Leviathan; a cold, sprawling tangle of laws and technicalities and a government that’s far too eager to shove its nose into places it was never invited. A machine that grinds slowly, impersonally, and without mercy, even when every human being involved knows the right thing to do.
That kind of enemy is the one diligent little sheepdogs like Lucy and Snuggles were never built to fight. Their loyalty, their courage, their sharp instincts - none of these things matter against paperwork and policy and the slow, soulless turning of bureaucratic gears.
And that’s what is on my mind as another day turns to night and Lucy remains in her cramped, little cell.
The real enemy is something that we have created by not being diligent guardians of our own government.
#SaveLucy
#SaveSnuggles