I know that readers of this blog and the other blogs on this site are looking for technical discussions but I hope you'll allow me this personal digression.
Like many of us, I've had pets my whole life; I've historically been a dog person having had 3 German Sheppard dogs growing up. More recently, my wife and I have two cats; some of you might already be aware of this fact if you happen to have seen the kitty bloggers.
In recent years, my wife and I have started including donations to the SPCA and a few different animal rescues throughout the country along with the other charities we support. This has been driven largely by our developing awareness of animal cruelty and irresponsible pet ownership.
Over the weekend, I received information from one of the animal charities regarding one of the most extreme cases of animal cruelty that I could ever imagine.
Some… jerk (I'm keeping my language in check for the forum) decided to literally burn an animal's entire front-left paw & leg down to an ashen crisp. They also slashed all the way through her rear leg muscles so deeply that the back leg needs to be amputated.
An animal that just a few days ago was entirely healthy now must have 2 limbs amputated because some… jerk … thought it'd be funny to torture her.
I was going to include the picture of the animal here but I don't want to force it on you. If you're interested you can see the picture here (again be aware the picture can be hard to look at).
This post was conceived largely as a way for me to vent my frustrations at such an incredible act of cruelty. While typing the post though, something occurred to me. As cruel as this person was to the animal mentioned, many of us condemn far more animals to harsh lives of living in the streets often starving to death, dying of illness and other dangers caused by irresponsible pet ownership practices or failing to spay/neuter our pets.
As my last point, I just ask that you consider the long-term responsibility of getting a pet and be sure you are up for the task; they pee, poop, get sick, and need lots of attention every day (it's unreasonable to expect that your children will be able to bear the entire responsibility of caring for a pet) … please, please spay/neuter your pets. I'm not a pet-rights zealot, I just don't want to see anyone or anything suffer unnecessarily.
My apologies for the off topic post - back to regular business tomorrow.
Posted
Jan 16 2007, 06:45 PM
by
jim-wilson