Tragedy happens every single day yet only a few cases are ever brought to the light. The tragedy is animal cruelty, where animals are beat, starved and tortured. Animal abuse can be placed under one or both categories of neglect or intentional cruelty. Neglect is simply not taking proper care of your animal, not giving them/not being able to provide them food water and shelter falls under neglect. Intentional cruelty is things like hitting or harming your animal with intention to do so. (Petfinder, 2018)
Two forms of intentional animal abuse, that mainly targets dogs, are dog racing and dog fighting. The first form, Dog racing, is not automatically animal abuse but due to how cut throat in industry can be the owners of racing dogs often are. In a text by Sugandha Varshney it states, “Every year, thousands of healthy and young greyhound dogs are killed because these dogs lack racing potential or have been injured while racing, are therefore are no longer competitive.” (Varshney, 2016) Most people that go into dog racing are wealthy enough to by a good racing dog and breeds them with other racing dogs, if the puppies aren’t good runners some have them put down. The other form, dog fighting, is highly illegal and pits two dogs in battle against each other, while its not normally to the death the loosing dog will either die from its injuries or be left to die, killed, or brutally executed as part of the “sport.” (ASPCA, 2019)
More horrific practices are used in puppy mills, “dog farms” that use inhumane practices to breed dogs and sell puppies. The crueler puppy mills use tiny cages, often left outside so that the dogs are exposed to the elements and the wire cut and poke them. They also breed the dogs nonstop, with little to no rest in between litters, female dogs are used till they can no longer produce puppies and then are often abandoned or killed. Another problem is a disregard for genetics, with little to no thought of the dog’s health, they often breed dogs with serious health problems that get transferred to their litters (ASPCA, 2018)
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A practice like dog fighting that is almost just as cruel is cockfighting, these helpless poultry are pumped full of steroids so that they are aggressive. Cockfighting is often associated with drugs and other illegal activities, like arms trading. The roosters are often equipped with sharp objects tied to their feet and they are forced to fight, often to the death or later die due to injury obtained during the fight. (ASPCA, 2019)
There are people fighting back to help the animals, in big “farms” where cattle are raised, they are often mistreated and abused, forced into small cages where they spend their entire life’s, and they are often plagued by disease. The cattle often must stand in their own feces as it never gets cleaned and their hooves become soft and rot away. The wire of the cages often cut into the flesh of these poor animals and the never receive and treatment or help and the wounds often get infected and the cattle is left to die. The workers in these farms are often cruel to animals and kick and prod them with cattle prods that deliver a painful shock to the cows. To help these poor animals are animal activists that go undercover and get jobs at these factories and start collecting data and information on the inhumane conditions and try to get them shut down.(Solotaroff, 2013)
Another, less talked about abused, are horses; with all the sports and entertainment there are bound to be people who will abuse these poor animals. The most common form of horse abuse is neglect, the inability to take care of the animal. Examples of this is not having food or space to properly take care of a horse. These cases are normally due to uneducated owners that don’t know how to properly take care of horses. Another type of neglect is environmental neglect, this is where the horses do not have a proper shelter or don’t even have one.
Another type of environmental neglect is improper fences that can seriously injure the horses, if they are not tall enough the horses and try going over them and sustain serious injuries. The rarer type of abuse, intentional abuse, where people intentionally harm the animals. Although intentional abuse is quite rare, one example is where a “cowboy” would tie up a horse and force it to the ground and urinate on it as part of its training. The excuse that he used that his family used that method for generations, even though it is cruel and inhumane. The fact that it has been a standing tradition does not exempt it from morals or the law, the old excuse that “my grandpappy did it” should not be able to hold any ground. (STWH, 2016)
There is a perfectly legal form of animal abuse, animal testing. If the conditions testing animals lived in were used in a house hold the owner would immediately be fined or thrown in jail. Mice, rats, primates, dogs, and cats are all forced into small cages that leave them with little to no social interaction and often cause them to develop neurotic behavior such as excessive spinning or rocking back and forth.
Over 100 million animals die each year in the US in cruel tests. Examples of these inhumane tests are forcing mice and rats to inhale toxic fumes, force feeding dogs and cats pesticides and exposing rabbits’ sensitive eyes to acidic materials. These tests are both cruel and unassay as there are many companies and charity’s that specialize in non-animal research and they are quite successful. More ways to help are to fund anti animal testing research and engorging companies to use more effective non-animal methods. (PETA, 2019)
