Why do we allow this?

Or rather why, when we know this happens do we turn a blind eye to it and allow it to continue? I am speaking of abuse, cruelty to animals. On any given day there are at least 10 news stories of extreme abuse or cruelty to animals. One of the 10 I read this morning was about a animal welfare's undercover video release and charges against a dairy showing intentional and sadistic cruelty to the dairy cows and calves there.

I acknowledge that cruelty exists, and much of it goes unreported or found. And I really cannot even pretend to understand what makes a person be intentionally cruel to an animal. And they have proven that there is a strong link from abusing or sadistically killing animals to stepping up to abusing and killing people. And to expand this, I simply don't understand why if so many are against animal cruelty or abuse don't most of them stand up and report it or help stop it?

The ASPCA gives 10 simple guidelines to recognize and do your part to help stop abuse in your area. But there is more you can do on a bigger scale too. You can choose to not buy products from companies who have shown to have abuse or cruelty at their facilities, like the dairy. You can become informed as to where that milk is processed and refuse to buy milk from that facility who receives it's milk supplies from the abusing dairy. Same goes for farms for pigs, chickens, etc. In the case of the seal hunts in Canada, yes, it's not a good thing and there really isn't a need for it anymore, so encourage your local stores to NOT carry any Canadian seafoods in their stores, refuse to buy Canadian seafood. The way to get legislation and laws changed is to hit the pocketbooks. Buy from responsible companies who practice humane animal raising and harvesting practices. Watch your area, where you live, know who to report possible cruelty and abuse to. Be proactive.

Stop ignoring it, it won't go away. By your ignoring it, you are allowing it to continue, and the perpetrator to get worse and possibly cause the death of a person. And yes while I don't understand what the perpetrator must be thinking or feeling or how they can justify the abusive actions, we won't get them to stop if we don't report it.

And yes this is a global problem, not just here in the US. We as the "higher intellegence" beings agreed to care for all life and protect it. Do your part.

Supreme Court and animal abuse

Well it seems in the news today that the Supreme Court struck down a federal law yesterday that was aimed at banning videos that show graphic violence against animals, saying it violates the right to free speech. The law was enacted in 1999 to limit Internet sales of so-called crush videos, which appeal to a certain sexual fetish by showing women crushing to death small animals with their bare feet or high-heeled shoes.

The high court, voting 8-1, overturned the conviction of a Virginia man for selling videos of pit bulls fighting each other and attacking other animals.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said the language of the law went much further, creating “a criminal prohibition of alarming breadth.” He said the statute as written would have affected hunting videos and magazines.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented, saying the ruling effectively legalized the sale of crush videos and “is thus likely to spur a resumption of their production.” He faulted the majority for striking down a “valuable statute.”

The law reads as this:

18 USC 48 / PUBLIC LAW 106-152

Sec. 48. - Depiction of animal cruelty
(a) Creation, Sale, or Possession.
Whoever knowingly creates, sells, or possesses a depiction of animal cruelty with the intention of placing that depiction in interstate or foreign commerce for commercial gain, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

(b) Exception.
Subsection (a) does not apply to any depiction that has serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value.

(c) Definitions.
In this section
(1) the term ”depiction of animal cruelty” means any visual or auditory depiction, including any photograph, motion-picture film, video recording, electronic image, or sound recording of conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed, if such conduct is illegal under Federal law or the law of the State in which the creation, sale, or possession takes place, regardless of whether the maiming, mutilation, torture, wounding, or killing took place in the State; and

(2) the term ”State” means each of the several States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and any other commonwealth, territory, or possession of the United States

The federal law extends state and federal laws to make possession, creation, or selling of crush videos a felony, regardless of where the video was originally created.

Personally I find this all sad, sad that we can as a society even permit this sort of act and torture to happen and to have it endorsed or allowed by the courts now is even worse. There are so many times where I feel that the same acts should be done to the perpetrators as they have done to their victims. I feel our legal systems are too lax, and too many people get away with so much that is harmful.

Pet-Abuse.com offers these tips on crush videos and what happens if you find one or come across one online:

1. Once you realize that it is a crush video, stop watching it. These videos can be quite grisly, and are extremely traumatic to watch.

2. If possible, download the video file to your computer, and send it (along with the url of the page and any user information that may be included) to info@pet-abuse.com and info@peta.org. Do NOT complain to the site owner until this has been done, otherwise they may remove the video, and then animal protection agencies have no evidence to work from.

3. If the video is posted on a community website such as MySpace, e-mail the website’s support team, reporting it as inappropriate and offensive.
If a video has made it to MySpace, however, there is a good chance it is already posted on one of the gore sites. On sites that are clearly geared towards displaying offensive content, sending an angry letter to the webmaster will typically not help. Those sites make money on advertising, so the more offensive their content is, the more website hits it usually gets. In short, their most disturbing videos are their bread and butter, and it is unlikely that they will remove a video that is getting such strong reactions.

4. For gore sites, to find out who owns the domain name, and where the website is hosted, use a lookup utility such as samspade.org or dnsstuff.com. You may try e-mailing or calling the website hosting company, however gore sites have been known to host videos such as unedited human beheadings, so the chances are good that the website host is already aware of the content and simply does not care.

I imagine too that complaining to your state lawmakers perhaps can bring about change. And if you have or suspect someone or a group of intentionally abusing animals, report it to your local law enforcement and animal welfare/control.

Please! Help the animals at the Las Vegas, NM Shelter!

This is a cross post from an animal networking group in New Mexico. This woman has worked tirelessly to help the animals that go through the City of Las Vegas, New Mexico's animal shelter. What all this sounds like is that the Mayor and City manager are entrenched in their thinking and as a result are allowing cruelty to exist. Anyhow, here is her (edited to remove some names) post. If you can help, please do so. Even if it is to write the mayor and city manager or help get these animals out and into foster care. This lady is with the Animal Welfare Coalition.

"Since late August, there has been one attack after another. Everything we achieved and planned for welfare of shelter animals has been blocked or distorted. I could go through whole sequence but I am very tired. Simply, the Director of City Shelter would rather all dogs and cats were euthanized than any effort put forward to care for, adopt or transfer them. His name is Elmer Martinez. He heads several departments within the city. The shelter is the lowest on his list. He has been the motivating force behind the shelter supervisors' (past and present) obsession with killing and neglect. He is one of the most manipulating and deceitful individuals I have ever come upon. ( And I fought for the freedom of Black and Puerto Rican boys with the NYC courts.) I have seen hate and prejudice but never the amount of cruelty and corruption that I have witnessed here in Las Vegas. A simple request such as "Please shut the kennel doors on freezing cold nights" is answered by Elmer Martinez and Tim Dodge, City Manager, claiming that I and all of the Animal Welfare Coalition members are"undermining" the interim supervisor, Robert, whose decision it was and is to leave doors open. No, I just didn't want the dogs to get sick. AWC was not involved at all. The dogs are sick. The doors are still open. There seems to be no recourse as this a patron system and Martinez is supported by the higher ups in city government, the Major and the City Manager. I have given the best battle of my life. (NYC prejudiced judges seem like kindness and light after this.) In order to protect my own animals ( poisoning is accepted practice here, as is shooting ) and myself, I am leaving. Hopefully by March 1st. My heart breaks with the plight of the animals in this town. The pitiful irony is, there is no reason to slaughter the shelter animals. With very little to no help, I moved over 1000 dogs from shelter to rescues and good homes in the past year and half. With help, we could have researched many more rescues in the West and moved many more dogs and cats. With financial help, we could have had medical care and a van and gas to transfer. And on and on. We were getting there, then Elmer and Kelly forbid all volunteers. No dog walking, no cat petting, and no exercise pen, still. Now, no adoptions, "a chain of command" to report with any action to free an animal. I have been thrown out of the shelter and then told to come back and then told I was not allowed to be there so many times that I am dizzy. I have no idea what my status is right now. When I go in to photograph animals or help with animals, I have been told to leave by City Manager. At other times, I am called in to look at a dog that needs to get out. God knows. Again, tired of fighting. And the city has never paid me a cent or a "Thank You" for getting dogs out. Odd, very odd.
Somehow, I still have hope. Just can't hold it all up without real help. Time for relief to arrive.  Elmer is threatening to start the 3 day kill ordinance, which is unfortunately legal, in city ordinances. Oh yes, the City Council voted the shelter and Animal Control over to Public Safety, read Police Department , two months ago. It has not been taken over yet supposedly any day. Finally, the intelligent and very kind Animal Control officer has been so badly treated by Elmer that she has requested a transfer to Water Control. She loves the animals and cares for them beautifully. She could plan and build a humane shelter. "

Here is one proposal and reply from another member:

"My proposal: a massive letter writing campaign to the city of Las Vegas, telling them that we WILL NOT be bringing our company to visit Las Vegas until they right this situation. What I need from you is a 'bullet list' of issues to cite in our letters or phone calls. In other words, what are the 3 biggest issues there? Inhumane treatment? Facilities? Please let us know what exactly we should highlight in our letters and phone calls. We need to spread the word to the animal community to inundate the mayor's office.
Mayor Tony Marquez
City of Las Vegas
1700 North Grand Ave
Las Vegas, NM 87701
(505) 454-1401
The mayor's email address (no guarantee that he'll get this, so hard-copy letters or phone calls are better): mayormarquez@yahoo.com
Maybe it will help, maybe not, but at least we've done SOMEthing.
Also, letters to the editor of the local paper would also bring attention to the situation. Email letters for the Las Vegas Optic to: tmcdonald@lasvegasoptic.com"

I felt also that perhaps getting word out to the communities and other area major newspapers and news agencies  would help bring the spotlight on. I also would like to turn this over to the ASPCA as they try their best to monitor these types of things and can shut down shelters if needed.

Anyhow, please help get the word out and help the animals in Las Vegas. Thank you!

Declawing cats and other regularly practiced forms of cruelty

I have to give kudos to some California cities recently. Back in 2003, West Hollywood California outlawed declawing cats noting that it is in an of itself a form of animal cruelty. More recently several other California cities have followed suit. I am very happy to hear this. And yes, it has always been in the back of my mind that this practice was barbaric and extremely cruel.



Wikipedia gives this description of declawing:

Onychectomy is an operation to surgically remove the claws and part of the toes, most often of a household cat, though occasionally of other animals such as circus lions or dancing bears. This process involves amputating all or part of the distal phalanx, or end bone, of the animal's toes, and is popularly known as declawing.

Although common in North America, declawing is rarely practiced outside North America and is considered an act of animal cruelty in certain other regions (see "Declawing practices" below).

Apparently other regions in the country have outlawed it also.

Back in the 70's I worked for a veterinarian in Florida. I cried the first time I watched him "de-claw" a young cat. At that time all he did was anesthetize the cat, and using regular toenail (scissor type) clippers, lopped off the nail and last joint at the "knuckle". Imagine taking those selfsame clippers and removing your fingernail permanently at the first knuckle. But the poor kitties, coming out of anesthesia and you could see the pain in their eyes, you could see that it hurt to stand on the bandaged feet. My grandmother had her last two cats declawed, and they were forever tender on their feet, and were terrified to have them touched at all. The same type thing was done for removing puppy dew claws. Except curved scissors were used then to stop the bleeding a styptic powder or q-tip used on the wound. No anesthesia, and it was done within days of birth.

Docking tails on puppies wasn't much better as they were done so young and there was no anesthesia done on puppies. And Docking was done with a pair of sharp surgical scissors, and then a couple stitches put in. At least pups who were to have their ears cut, got the benefit of anesthesia. But it was after ear cutting that they had problems. In order to get the ears to "stand" tongue depressors with, hopefully cotton taped to the bottom, would be inserted in the ears, then the ear tips taped to the depressor to train the ear to stand straight up. This was done mostly on breeds like Dobermans, Pit  Bulls, Great Danes, and Schnauzers. Either way, it was still a painful and traumatic experience for the animals.

Other animals suffer tail docking also. Sheep are docked, mostly using very tight rubber bands to cause the circulation to stop and the end of the tail to drop off. Many horse breeds still have their tails docked as foals either for "fashion" or because they still believe that without docking working horses' tails that they become entangled in harnesses, or will cause other problems or are difficult to deal with.

Any of these for any animals is unacceptable anymore. It is mutilation, plain and simple. Fine if we make a conscious decision to mutilate ourselves, but why should we purposely mutilate our animals?

Why would you declaw? People who are very vain about their furniture will cite they don't want the cat to scratch the furniture, or them. Well then, provide plenty of scratching posts sprayed or rubbed with catnip to attract them to their "furniture" rather than yours. And yes you can train a cat, it's easier than you think.

Why dock tails? Vanity? On horses, how do they swat flies then? Flyspray is really ineffective, flies happen period. Their tails are the best defense. On dogs? Why? Is it because you are afraid the tail will sweep off your coffee table? Is it the style? No need for the style anymore.

Some old timers think animals don't feel  the pain, they are just an animal. Uh excuse me? What makes them think this? Do they know personally that young animals, babies included here, don't feel pain at losing an appendage? Do you think an infant wouldn't feel it if you cut off his finger at the first knuckle? No different than declawing or docking. All the same actually, you are cutting off an appendage at a joint.

Ear cropping or docking, hoo boy, talk about a fashion gone way out of acceptance and style. Every so often I read about people cutting off their pit puppy's ears with common scissors and getting busted for it and charged with animal cruelty. They used to cut of pit's ears to give less purchase or one less appendage to be torn to shreds by the dog it is fighting. It's awful, ears provide protection to the inner ear of the dog. So stupid.

And my last gripe of the day is this, Spay and neuter your pets! Even "responsible" breeders are only adding to and compounding the over population problem. Majority of the litter your un-altered animal gives birth too is probably going to be euthanized because it cannot find a home.

While I don't agree with PETA most of the time. I mean their topics are not bad ones, they just get a little over exuberant on their efforts, this poster is probably one of the best ones I've see in support of spay and neuter.