Bowen Leonard

                                                                  1/9/11

                                                                 Per. 3/4

Animal Abuse

 

Imagine getting beaten, tested, and used to fight for entertainment. Animals all over the world are abused and tortured (mentally) mostly because of ignorant owners and greedy people who just want money. There are different types of animal abuse such as overt, intentional abuse, which happens when a person purposely causes physical harm, injury or the death of an animal. Another form of animal cruelty is neglect. A solution to the neglect of animals is to make sure the person who will adopt or purchase an animal will have the correct education to keep a pet. They have to have certain requirements in their living conditions and have an appropriate amount of funding to pay for food, water, and medical supplies. As for physically harming an animal, there’s not really a “solution” to it, but there is a way to keep people from doing it. Public awareness is a big deal when it comes to the stop of harming animals. Now ask yourself, if you were an animal getting beaten, would you like it?

         Animal abuse is a big problem, but not everybody knows about it. In April 2007, Michael Vick pleaded guilty for dog fighting. There have also been many other cases of dog fighting, but just because some people can get away with it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t affect other people. “To begin discussing the history of animal cruelty is to go back literally to ancient times. Fighting dogs for sport, for example, has been traced back as far as the 12th Century. For centuries these fights occurred across Europe until the baiting of larger animals was prohibited in 1835. At this point, dog-on-dog combat became the cheaper, legal alternative and the fighting dogs, as well as the taste for the brutal blood sport was exported to other countries including the United States,” said Monica Villavicencio (www.npr.org). Now if more people were aware of these awful things, there would be a lot fewer cases of abuse and especially dog fighting.  “The birth of the Internet opened the door for new types of animal abuse to emerge. Among the images of animal cruelty that are available on the Internet are “crush videos” in which people are shown crushing small animals with their bare feet or stiletto heels. These videos are able to infiltrate mainstream audiences because of increased file sharing networks and the growing popularity of websites that display violent videos for their shock value. Though illegal under the 1999 federal legislation later nicknamed “The Crush Act,” it is often very difficult to prosecute the offenders of these crimes, as they are usually able to hide behind the anonymity offered by the virtual world,” said Wayne Pacelle (www.pet-abuse.com) Animal abuse is a very serious problem because animals don’t deserve to be treated like this, and without animals a very long chain of cause and effect would happen. People abuse animals for entertainment and because they can. Dog fighting is a way that people can make money by betting on dogs and the dogs don’t fight until one wins, they fight until one dies. Therefore, the main reason why people abuse animals is because they can.

          Then by making sure the person who will adopt or purchase an animal will have the correct education, funding, and appropriate living conditions for the animals. The ASPCA stated that, “The neglect of an animal by an individual is often (though not always) the result of a lack of education and awareness about proper animal care, and can be remedied through education and by requiring the owner to provide these basic life sustaining elements.” (learningtogive.org) Unintelligible people can lack the mental perception and responsibility that people taking care of animals need. ”To continue the unfortunate cycle of violence, victims of child abuse are more likely to become perpetrators of animal cruelty themselves,” said Cindy Adams of the ASPCA (learningtogive.org). This sort of neglect is very important because the animal in this case practically suffer because they don’t have the supplies necessary to live. Some people say that unintelligence isn’t a reason even though it is because most people lack intelligence to take care of a pet. On the other hand, people purposely hurt animals.     

         A solution to dog fighting and other physically harmful acts is to make the public aware. “Beyond the need to recognize and put an end to animal cruelty for the sake of the animal victims involved, also important to note is the very direct connection between animal cruelty and human violence,” stated F. Ascione, C. Weber, and D. Wood (www.vachss.com). Everyday, there are people making animals fight, hitting and abusing them. Making this a publicly known issue could strongly reduce the amount of abused animals. ”A survey of pet-owning families with substantiated child abuse and neglect found that animals were abused in 88 percent of homes,” said DeViney, Dickert, & Lockwood (www.americanhumane.org). Some people say that dog fighting and animal fighting is a way to make money and they say that it doesn’t affect people around you. That is completely untrue because even though you make money, this isn’t a job; it’s just a terrible type of gambling, which is why more people should be aware of these things.

         Finally, animal abuse is a terrible thing for any human to do and it’s a serious problem and has to be stopped. Making the public aware is a better solution because that would lower the deaths of not only dogs, but also other animals that people make fight because more people could alert the authorities and put a stop to it. If this crime doesn’t stop, then more and more helpless animals will die, and a lot more people will get away with it.