Snickers the dog is safe in Las Vegas, you'll be happy to know.
The 11-month-old cocker spaniel was aboard his owners' 48-foot sailboat in December when it ran aground on Fanning Island, a tiny atoll that's part of the South Pacific nation of Kiribati.
After two weeks on Fanning, Snickers' owners hopped on a cargo vessel and made it back to civilization in California. Tragically, the ship's rules prohibited bringing animals on board. They left the pup behind.
Then began the heroic effort to save Snickers. The sailing magazine Latitude 38 publicized the pooch's plight in March. Almost immediately, an international force went into action to rescue Snickers.
Las Vegas resident Jack Joslin, who led the mission of mercy, contacted the Hawaiian Humane Society. In April, the Humane Society arranged for an expedition to retrieve Snickers and carry him to a cruise ship operated by NCL America, a subsidiary of Norwegian Cruise Lines.
The Pride of Aloha delivered Snickers to the Humane Society in Oahu. After a few days in quarantine, Hawaiian Airlines offered him a free flight to Los Angeles.
From there, it was a short trip to his new home in Las Vegas.
"I read the story and thought, 'Somebody's got to do something,"' Joslin told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "I thought, 'I can do something."'
I have great sympathy for Snickers and empathy with Joslin. As a boy, I took in more stray dogs than I can remember -- and certainly more than my parents care to remember. Paybacks, as they say, are a bit chastening, and today my wife and children have made my home a canine sanctuary for one stray and one rescue from the Animal Defense League.
But as heartwarming as Snickers' rescue is, as gratifying as it is to see far-flung individuals and businesses come together for a decent cause, there's also something disheartening about this story.
Last week, the New York Times ran a horrific image on its front page. It was a photo of an unnamed boy from Zimbabwe, 11 months old. His tiny legs were contorted and in casts. According to his mother, supporters of Robert Mugabe's governing party shattered the boy's legs trying to force her to disclose the whereabouts of her husband, an opposition organizer who is in hiding.
There are countless other hideous crimes committed against people in Zimbabwe, Burma, North Korea, Darfur -- where children are thrown into bonfires -- and elsewhere. How many people read about their plight and think, "Somebody's got to do something."
A dog stranded on a South Pacific atoll -- "I can do something." Torture, crimes against humanity, genocide -- "What can I do?"
It's a paradox psychologist Paul Slovic identified in a paper, If I look at the mass I will never act:' Psychic numbing and genocide.
Slovic's work found that people are less likely to show compassion for a large pattern of human suffering than they are for a single, identifiable person -- or dog.
Ponder that.
A large number of humanitarian aid groups admirably provide support for the afflicted, sometimes openly, sometimes clandestinely and at great risk. But who will stop the affliction?
After four years of massacres in Darfur that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, last July the UN Security Council finally committed to deploy a 26,000-man peacekeeping force. A year later, fewer than 10,000 poorly equipped peacekeepers are on the ground. The mass killings and gang rapes continue.
We live in a world shattered by the evil and cruelty of man. Sometimes it requires more than goodwill and optimism to have any hope of putting the pieces back together again.
There was a time when conscientious people looked at the crimes against humanity and genocide in Saddam Hussein's Iraq and said, "Somebody's got to do something." Now, many of the same people accusingly ask, "What have you done?"
Snickers will go to bed tonight in Las Vegas, safe, well cared for and well fed. That boy from Zimbabwe with the shattered legs? God only knows.
Jonathan Gurwitz is a writer with the San Antonio Express-News.
--New York Times News Services
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