PETA Offers Struggling Detroit Schools $10K to Post Lifesaving Anti-Chaining Message Starring Kid Ink

From Kid to Kid: Group’s Offer Will Help Students and Teachers—and Dogs Left Outside in the Winter Cold

For Immediate Release:
January 21, 2016

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

With more than 80 Detroit public schools closed on Wednesday as teachers staged strikes in protest of deteriorating infrastructure in schools, PETA is ready to pitch in with an offer the group hopes Darnell Earley, the city school district’s emergency manager, will accept: a $10,000 donation toward repairs if the district agrees to place PETA’s anti-chaining “Chain Your Dog? Not Cool” posters—starring hip-hop artist Kid Ink—in each of its schools. The ads remind guardians to take their animals indoors. As PETA points out, the offer would help all Detroit’s residents stay safe this winter, a time when many dogs chained outside suffer and die in the cold.

“From one ‘kid’ to another, we hope our ad will encourage the students, who are deserving of a safe, warm school environment themselves, to relate to other vulnerable individuals in their neighborhoods and take their dogs indoors during the cold winter months,” says PETA Senior Director of Youth Outreach and Campaigns Marta Holmberg. “Chaining turns otherwise friendly dogs into ticking time bombs, and they’re in constant danger of being forgotten, becoming entangled in the chain, hanging themselves, or being attacked by other animals or cruel passersby.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—urges all kind people to let their dogs live indoors and never chain them.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.

PETA’s letter to Darnell Earley, emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools, follows.

January 21, 2016

Darnell Earley
Emergency Manager
Detroit Public Schools

Dear Mr. Earley, I am writing on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and our more than 3 million members and supporters, including thousands across Michigan, to make an offer that would benefit your students and the entire community: We’d like to contribute $10,000 toward the cost of repairs to Detroit’s public schools in exchange for the prominent placement of our Kid Ink “Chain Your Dogs?” posters in each of the district’s schools. From one “kid” to another, we hope our ad will encourage the students, who deserve a safe, warm school environment themselves, to relate to other vulnerable individuals in their neighborhoods and take their dogs indoors during the cold winter months.

For these highly social pack animals, little could be worse than being chained outdoors. Deprived of everything that’s natural and important to them and left to endure frigid nights in the winter and sweltering days in the summer, chained dogs often go insane from loneliness and a lack of exercise and mental stimulation. They are in constant danger of being forgotten, becoming entangled in their chain, hanging themselves, and being attacked by other animals or cruel passersby. They are truly helpless, and they know it. Often, all they have is a tiny patch of land, and they must defecate in the same area where they eat and sleep. Whenever they try to move forward to greet someone or check out something new, they are held back by their chain.

The results of this inhumane practice can be deadly to humans as well. A study that was authored in part by two Centers for Disease Control and Prevention physicians found that chained dogs are almost three times as likely to attack as dogs who are not tethered. Chaining turns otherwise friendly dogs into ticking time bombs. Hundreds of people in the U.S. have been attacked, some fatally, by chained dogs. Children are especially at risk.

Our offer would help keep Detroit’s residents—both human and canine—safe this winter. We would love to work with you and the school board to make this happen. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Marta Holmberg
Senior Director of Youth Outreach and Campaigns