My Friendly Pets

It is a shame that we have to have a month designated to preventing animal cruelty, but in today’s day and age it is necessary.

Animal cruelty is prevelant in today’s society, probably more so than ever. The stress on people is immense today. There is always too little time and too little money and often the object of a person’s frustration is the animal that is closest to them.

There are basically two types of cruelty defined by the ASPCA. The first is type of cruelty is anytime an animal is made to suffer or feel needless pain. Many times we think of this type of cruelty as intentional, but an animal may also suffer or feel pain through needless neglect. This is also considered cruelty. The second type of cruelty is simply neglect; meaning denying the animal the necessities of life, such as food, shelter, water or appropriate medical care. Even people who have the best of intentions may be committing animal cruelty by simply having too many animals. There are stories each and every week on the news about people who lost control of the number of pets they house and often those pets are forces to live in horrible conditions that are unsanitary and unsafe. People often underestimate the amount of money that it takes to adequately care for an animal. They can’t afford decent food for the animal, so they may purchase poor quality products or simply feed the dog an entire diet of table scraps. That could eventually cause physical hardship to the dog as many of our “people foods” are unsafe for dogs to eat. Refer to a prior entry for this information by clicking here.

I think the harder cases to hear about are the cruelty cases where people do horrible mutilating things to dogs, whether it is by engaging the dog in fighting for profit, or just for the mere pleasure of seeing a living creature suffer. I have always been wary of people who were cruel to animals. My theory is that if you can be cruel to a defenseless animal, what might you do to a human? I believe the way someone treats the animals in their life is a good indication of their individual character. You can learn a lot about about a person by watching them interact with a dog or a cat.

Without trying to bring in any specific cases, as that can be very depressing, I want everyone to remember that whatever effort you can make to keep an animal safe from harm is a wonderful thing. The animals can’t necessarily thank you, but I can!!!