Dog’s Worst Enemy

A few months ago my family and I were riding in my dad’s car on the way to Eldorado, Iowa. We were driving through a small town called Calmar. I had turned around to look out the window, when I saw a frightening man with his dog outside his house. He was hitting his dog on his head and kicking it in his stomach. The dog, like a snail, was curled up hoping that it wouldn’t get hit again. After seeing that I thought for awhile and realized that something had to be done. In the world today we realize that animal abuse, pollution, slavery, smoking, drugs, distracted driving are bad things. However, we choose to do little to nothing about these issues. Don’t get me wrong, the United States has lots of rules on distracted driving as well as many more issues, but do they really enforce them as much as we think we do? Animal abuse is in the world today and people know it’s there, but choose to do little to nothing about it. This is why I am going to share how to resolve this bad situation.

In the United States we have three levels of animal abuse laws. The first level is general cruelty, this is if you see someone hitting or kicking their animal with excessive force. For example if my dog goes to the bathroom in my house. I might hit him on the mouth, but not so it would hurt him for a long time period. My neighbor has two cats that are extremely nice, but they pee on their new carpet. Their owner doesn’t hit or kick them, he just puts them outside for awhile. Consequently, when the cats repetitively peed inside the house , they were placed outside to learn what was right. Those two situations are normal things pet owners do. Now if you see your neighbor or someone hitting or kicking their animal really hard it would be best to call the police or confront them.

The next level of animal abuse is torturing, this is when a terrible owner ties an animal up for days and doesn’t feed them. Keeping dogs, cats, or any animal locked up in a cage, or tied up in chains is disgusting. There are people all over the world that do this everyday and call themselves animal owners. What type of owner would tie an animal up and not feed them everyday? I believe this is one of those issues that I talked about earlier where people know this is happening, but choose to do nothing about it. In my opinion, if anyone saw this, why wouldn’t they say something to the owner or call law enforcement. The next time you see someone torturing or training an animal to fight please do something. While the first two levels of animal cruelty are bad, they don’t have much on animal fighting..

Animal fighting dates back to 1938 where “dogmen” purchased and sold fighting dogs. They would bring their dogs or a wild cat to a barn to fight against their opponent. This cruelty dates back to 1938 and still is happening? The dogs in the fights usually end dying even if they are the “winners”. Then they get thrown into a pile and burned. For the innocent cats that are in the fight, they end up with scars and scratches all along their bodies. Most cats lose their vision and sense of smell. According to the Humane Society every year there are about 2,000 reported animal abuse cases in the United States. 65% of them being dogs, 18% cats, and 17% other animals. This study shows that dogs are the most abused animal, why are dogs called a man’s best friend when they are being abused the most? Let me ask you something, if your pet was being abused by someone else, would you stop them? I strongly agree that most pet owners would answer yes. If most pet owners would stop someone from hurting their animal, why won’t they stop someone else from hurting a different animal that wasn’t theirs. Many people feel this way and therefore started to create companies helping abused or endangered animals.

At one time in your life you were watching television, when one of those animal abuse commercials came on, it was trying to tell you how bad animal abuse is and how you can stop it. Companies like PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and ASPCA, or American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are trying to convince Americans to donate money to help and buy food for abused animals. Altogether, billions of dollars are generated each year from these two companies. After several years of working with scared and abused animals, PETA and ASPCA have saved millions of animals. While both companies are successful in gaining money, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are efficiently spending money.

If every person in the United State donated one dollar to PETA or ASPCA to help save animals, these two companies would be debt free for 10 years excluding the money they’d be earning during those years. That is a very bold statement because not everyone in the U.S. would donate a dollar, but some people would donate more and cover for those who did not donate. But is this really necessary? According to PETA and ASPCA, donations to the extreme would have its ups and downs. PETA runs of low income and cheap resources to keep animals living healthy. ASPCA runs their business with high quality products to give needy animals maximum care. PETA would take in less money than ASPCA because they run on cheap supplies. ASPCA would bring in more of the donations because they run on high price supplies. PETA would feel cheated because they are getting less money for doing the same thing as ASPCA. At the first glance, ASPCA seems like they have a very successful business, but do they really?

ASPCA pays its managers almost double the wage of a shelter worker. The managers walk around and supervise everything, while the workers feed, wash, and care for the animals (all of the hard work). I understand that someone has to be a manager, but why doesn’t ASPCA raise their wages for shelter workers so they get paid more? ASPCA takes in so many donations and spends it all on animal supplies, while they can instead be paying their shelter workers a higher wage. ASPCA and PETA create a system that allows shelter workers to be paid a fair amount of money, while the animals would be getting the care they deserve.

It takes generations to domesticate animals, but that’s by no means any reason to torture and abuse your pet in order for it to learn. Something as simple as giving your pet a treat is enough to make it learn right from wrong. Animal abuse needs to stop as it keeps getting worse. One cause of this is the same thing that’s supposedly ‘helping’ them. ASPCA and PETA are doing the very thing that the man I was watching through my car window was doing. They may not be torturing them or forcing them to fight, but they aren’t treating them with respect, which is what both of these companies pledged to do.