This is not going to be the easiest topic to read about but we all need to realize what’s going on. We all know it’s happening and we try to avoid hearing about it because it’s sad to think about. How are we supposed to help prevent animal abuse when nobody is willing to stand up for the innocent animals being mistreated. I’m so tired of seeing stories and videos all over social media of another animal being abused. It could be something as small as declawing a cat, it’s not right. No animal deserves to be treated so poorly. I will never understand how someone could do such a horrible thing to these innocent animals.
On a late May afternoon last year in southwest Baltimore, a 2 year old female pit bull terrier was doused in gasoline and set alight. A young city policewoman on her regular patrol of the neighborhood turned her squad car onto the 1600 block of Presbury Street and saw a cloud of black smoke rising from the burning dog. She hopped out, ran past idle onlookers and managed to put out the flames with her sweater. The dog, named Phoenix, survived for four days with burns over 95 percent of her body, but soon began to succumb to kidney failure and had to be euthanized.
The scale, speed and intensity of the response were striking. The subject of animal abuse, especially the abuse of pit bulls in dog fighting activities, has achieved a higher profile after the 2007 arrest of the N.F.L. star Michael Vick for operating an illegal interstate dog fighting operation in Surry County, Va. But the pit bull is merely the most publicized victim of a growing number of professionals including police officers, prosecutors, psychologists, social workers, animal control officers, veterinarians and dogcatchers are now addressing; wanton cruelty toward animals. Before 1990, only six states had felony provisions in their animal ­cruelty laws; now 46 do. Two years ago, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals formed the nation’s first Mobile Animal Crime Scene Investigation Unit, a rolling veterinary hospital and forensic lab that travels around the country helping traditional law enforcement agencies follow the evidentiary trails of wounded or dead animals back to their abusers. Every 60 seconds, an animal gets abuse. That’s unconscionable, especially in our advanced culture, but animal cruelty continues to occur all over the world. (Charles Siebert, of “The Wauchula Woods Accord: Toward a New Understanding of Animals.”)
Animal cruelty can take many different forms, but the impact is always the same. An animal capable of love and creating social relationships experience pain, fear, and desperation. And it needs to stop. We live in a world that not only turns a blind eye to animal cruelty but condones it whether through indifference or legislation. It’s legal to raise chickens in deplorable conditions for the sole purpose of slaughtering them later. If that isn’t animal cruelty, then what is? The problem is that there aren’t enough people fighting for animal rights. If everyone started to look at animals and not just dogs and cats as fellow animals who share our planet, we would see far fewer cases of cruelty toward animals.
Reading all these articles destroyed me. It's sad to see all the stories and nobody realizing it’s getting worse. Some people are noticing but we’re not doing enough for them. They all have feelings and they can feel pain. It's time to make that change for them, they don’t deserve this. They need to be treated like family because they are family. If everyone can experience the love they feel for their owners then they will understand they are more than just animals. Let’s make that change and show our pets the love they deserve.