Saving Sido: How one dog sparked a movement

By Christie Keith, Special to SF Gate

Tuesday, June 22, 2010


Sido was a little tan-and-white dog, mixed-breed, pretty, charming and devoted to her owner. Not that different, maybe, from the dog lying at your feet while you read this.

You may not recognize her name, but she more than earned her place in the book of canine history as the four-footed inspiration for what became the modern no-kill movement, and the first life saved during a remarkable period of animal lifesaving in San Francisco in the 1990s.

When Sido's owner, San Francisco's Mary Murphy, committed suicide in 1979, her will left strict instructions that Sido be taken to her veterinarian and "destroyed." The will's executor, Rebecca Wells Smith, said Murphy was afraid no one could take the right kind of care of her dog.

But Sido was in the care of the San Francisco SPCA, and its director, Richard Avanzino, saw things very differently. When Smith went to court to force the agency to have the dog killed, Avanzino refused, vowing that all the SPCA's resources would be used to fight for her life.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/06/22/petscol062210.DTL

Interesting article.

about the afterlife.
That an important person should have his or her most beloved slaves and associated workers accompany him or her into the afterlife.
The ancient statues of soldiers in China were a way around this belief. Before, Chinese emperors and other kings and leaders associated with them killed vast numbers of slaves, soldiers and servants and had them buried with them.
It's unconscionable today. I find the practice horrible.

in these groups also.

...if you're wise enough to make a will, be wise enough to set aside something and make arrangements for any pets who outlive you.

loved that animal so much they couldn't imagine the kind of care they gave it coming from someone else. I have the same fear for my three elderly dachshunds. No one in my family will care for them the way I do and so I am working like nuts to stay healthy enough to outlast them. I remember this case. Its a strange thing. You may not see it as love and its hard to imagine it as love but it was from that person's perspective.