Your Friend in the Fight

This is my first Blog post linked to the Kentucky Soybean website, and I hope it's the beginning of a beautiful and powerful relationship. If you’re a farmer reading this, you’ve probably heard of California’s Proposition 2. If you just heard an alarm go off in your head, that’s a good thing. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is drunk with power, high on the passage of Prop 2 - a law that will likely wipe out the California egg industry. By the way, I know one of those farmers who are now contemplating the extinction of their lifestyle and income. She’s smart, super nice, hard working, dedicated. She’s the 7th generation of her family farming tradition. Very little hope now of the 8th generation getting to carry on their heritage.

HSUS has declared they’re taking this “victory” to other states nationwide. I’m not a farmer, so I won’t claim to know what’s on the Top 5 List of things that farmers worry about. Truth be told, what I don’t know about farming would fill the Grand Canyon. But I do know the animal rights movement, and I’m here to tell farmers this. If HSUS isn’t on your Top 5 List of concerns, I suggest bumping something else off. (By the way, HSUS has a dizzying list of subsidiaries and shadow groups - to be named later.)

When Jaime Vincent suggested that I start a Blog on the Kentucky Soybean website as part of our newly launched Public Awareness Campaign, I thought it was a marvelous idea. I then realized I needed to introduce myself. Turns out that’s not as easy as it sounds, especially when your life has been somewhat unconventional.

I’ll start with this. I love farmers, and I am fiercely protective of those I love. It’s no accident that my dog of choice is the working German Shepherd. Ever see that joke, “How many dogs does it take to change a light bulb?” German Shepherd: I’ll change it as soon as I’ve led these people from the dark, check to make sure I haven’t missed any, and make just one more perimeter patrol to see that no one has tried to take advantage of the situation.

I’ve been fighting the “animal rights” (AR) movement since 2005. Back then, my life was mostly about training working German Shepherd Dogs - many of them preparing for a future as police dogs. (I started training dogs professionally in 1996 - before that I had a career in the horse business. Throughout my adult life, I’ve also worked as a writer, with many articles published in various magazines. During the 2008 California election campaign, while HSUS was promoting Prop 2, I was working full-time on a Congressional race.)

Anyway, back to 2005... I began to notice more and more “breed-specific-legislation” (BSL) being enacted in different states throughout the country, and it worried me. BSL includes mandatory spay/neuter (MSN) of dogs deemed “dangerous” - pit bulls always top the list, but the lists of named breeds targeted were growing longer, and in some places German Shepherds were named... These laws seemed to always be driven by AR groups, and I saw a pattern emerging. I had a strong suspicion these emotion-fueled laws were the tip of the iceberg.

Toward the end of 2006, I began writing articles warning about the danger. What I didn’t know at the time was that the mayor of Louisville, Kentucky was about to make all my dire predictions come true.

In January of 2007, Louisville mayor Jerry Abramson signed into law the most draconian, unconstitutional piece of anti-pet legislation anyone had ever seen. Reading the highlights of the 91-page ordinance was painful in a visceral way- a lot like watching someone tear up the Constitution and then set it on fire.

What made it even more scary was that this could happen in animal-loving Kentucky - home of the Kentucky Derby and the annual Rolex Kentucky 3-Day-Event. If such a terrible law could happen here, it could happen anywhere.

This fight is the good news/bad news deal. The bad news is that the AR movement has gained an awful lot of traction. The good news is that they’ve gained nearly all of it by operating on lies and deception. We can stop them in their tracks with the truth. Percentage-wise, very few people in our country have a clue as to the true agenda of the animal rights movement. Exposing the truth? That’s my job, but it’s yours too. (See “Got 50?”)

Back to trying to introduce myself... My love of horses led to my love of farmers. My family lived in a nice home in the suburbs, definitely not farm country - there was a golf course across the street. But, thank God, my dad and I shared a love of horses. So my parents indulged me by driving me out to the country for weekly horseback riding lessons. We started with Western to “get my feet wet”, but quickly transitioned to English and hunter/jumper riding.

The things you remember vividly are the things that touch your soul. I was five years old the first time I sat a horse at a canter, and I remember every detail like it was yesterday.

What genetic and environmental forces shape us? Hard to figure. That golf course across the street that my parents loved, and that Tiger Woods would have loved at the same age as me? I saw it as a big wasted space. LIke Tiger Woods, I handled a golf club at a young age. And that’s where the resemblance ends. I gutted it out for one summer. I had no talent, and spent the entire time on the greens thinking it was ridiculous to have such a wonderful cross-country course with no fences or horses.

When I was 12 years old, my parents made a decision that was to shape my future in almost every way. They bought a small horse property and my first horse, and we moved to my version of heaven. But like everything, it came with a price. We didn’t just move a few miles away. We moved from Indiana to Michigan, and left an entire life behind. Friends, school, neighborhood - many of the things that help a 12-year-old girl feel anchored in life - all left behind.
What I didn’t know was that God was sending me something like an angel to help navigate the uncharted territory of this strange new land. She rode up on horseback the first day, as we were unloading furniture and boxes. Her name was Debbie. She lived a few miles away, and just wanted to introduce herself. Debbie was in her early twenties. She and her husband were farmers. They lived right next door to her parents, who were also farmers.

Debbie took me under her wing like a big sister. She introduced me around the horse show circuit, she hauled my horses to shows. She coached me and mentored me. Once she realized I could really ride, she put me in the saddle on top of her best Quarter Horse gelding. Getting off my young filly and onto him was a lot like going straight from a Volkswagen to a Ferrari. Looking back, I think that was the day that led to a career galloping racehorses on the track. That was also the day that led to countless miles racing cross-country courses - flying over jumps, walls and water, on top of Thoroughbreds who outgunned even me in their love of speed and defiance of gravity.
Debbie was, in every way, a loyal and generous friend. She encouraged me and tested me. She helped me find out what I was made of, in the only way this can be done. She pushed me past my limits. Debbie, her husband, her parents and the other farmers I knew in my formative years - they all shared the same characteristics. They were the people who expected you to do your very best. They were also the people that you always knew you could count on.

We’ve all heard that expression. “He’d give you the shirt off his back.” I’ve always been sure the first time someone said that, they were talking about a farmer.

Next post topic: “Got 50?” How to protect USA farmers from “animal rights” activists.

Your Friend in the Fight,
Tina Perriguey
TPerriguey@GMail.com