Cover Stories Fall 2000

Remembering Rebecca

Bennington, Vermont: In January 1990, I received a call from a woman at the local pound about an old Chihuahua nobody wanted. By the time I arrived to pick up the dog, the woman said she had changed her mind. Instead, she had a greyhound that had been abandoned on New Year's Day in 20-below-zero weather. She brought in an emaciated brindle girl who ran toward me and collapsed at my feet, as if she knew me and we were old friends. She looked up at me with her soft doe eyes and I said, "I'll take her." But there was a husband at home expecting a five-pound Chihuahua. When I walked in with the greyhound, his jaw fell and he said, "By gosh, this is the biggest Chihuahua I have ever seen! " We named her Rebecca, which means "of elegant beauty" in Hebrew. Rebecca was the first greyhound I had ever seen. When I learned about the treatment these dogs receive at the hands of the racing industry, I decided to speak out and protest. On Mother's Day, May 13, 1990, the first anti-racing protest took place in front of the Green Mountain track in Pownal. That was the beginning ofmy fight for the greyhounds. On April 14, 2000 my beautiful, serene, beloved Rebecca, my greyhound angel, passed over to the other side at the age of 12 years and 6 months. Erika Hartman

Editor's Note: Erika Hartman, often alone, continued her protests at Green Mountain until it closed December 31, 1992, shortly after greyhound cruelties at the track were made public in The Bennington Free Press.