The You and the World project has to do with individuals researching to find current issues and ways to express interest in the topic to the outside world through blogging. The current events and issues that have happened could be local, international, national, or any other type of things that need change. With this project, the researcher is really passionate about their topic and has the freedom to express so through the blog. While researching their topic, the individuals find more and more information, enough to pass it around to all those around who might also want to know more about other current events, issues, and problems. After learning so much about the topics of issues and current events, all individuals look for a change that they could help make.
The issue that I am looking at is an international issue. Although different countries have different cultural values of animals, I am more focused on worldwide domestic animal abuse. There are so many issues with every single house pet man could think of and how they are rejected and neglected by thousands. I find this topic very interesting because of how there are so many cases of abuse in not only America, but all across the globe. For example, adoption centers for cats and dogs are so full these days because they were saved from terrible experiences back at what they had to call home. This issue with the abuse of not only cats and dogs, but other pets too, keeps me passionate about it because the abuse is completely senseless. Every ten seconds, an animal is abused. They are helpless under their owners, whom are supposed to treat their pets as an addition to their families, as a newborn baby. Animals do not know right from wrong unless taught, and hurting them and treating them unfairly is never the right way to teach right from wrong.
So far in this project, I've found out loads. For example, stats from the Aspca website reports that although many pets are owned, there is a huge amount of those in shelters, specifically dogs and cats. There are literally thousands of community animal shelters in the US alone, and over five million domestic animals come into shelters yearly. These animals are either given up by their previous owners, or captured by animal control. The saddest part of this story is that over half of the millions of animals moved to animal shelters are euthanized while there. For those who do not know, euthanasia is the "intentional ending of a life in order to relieve pain and suffering" (from Wikipedia). This means that dogs, cats, and other pets are "put to [eternal] sleep" when it seems like nothing else but death would be good for them. There are countless amounts of stray animals in the US, especially the almost one hundred million in America alone, buy why? Because they were put out of the house by their careless owners? Did they run out, and their owners were not responsible enough to get them to come back? Or did owners move from one house to another and left behind a "small" thing that they would not need? All of these could be factors. But all of these should not happen for pets that do not know how to cope with these situations. That's why they need owners.
When pets are abused, they could be for money, for fighting, for behavior, anything, really. Some pets are even abused out of pure love. What I mean by that is that there are animal hoarders that keep hundreds of pets cramped up in one house. These animals are usually cats. They go from two cats to ten and then fifty before a month is finished. Owners care too much and love all their animals. But this just might be a form of too much love. Yes, the cats are found on the streets and multiply in the house they live in, but conditions become so hostile that the cats usually become sick and sometimes die. With dogs, the same can happen. But, a more reoccurring problem with the abuse of dogs is the advancement of puppy mills. In those, puppies, instead of having a "childhood," are bred before mature, so that they could go to pet stores. The offspring of these puppies usually have medical problems. In puppy mills, dogs are bred at a young age, raised in harsh conditions and in cages, and are bred with siblings often. That is why all pet owners should, instead of buying pets from stores like Monster Pets or off the Internet, get them from actual local breeders in the area.
Finally, the most current story I found in animal abuse is that the al-Quaeda terrorist group has developed more plans to plant bombs in US airlines. One by the name of Ibrahim al-Asiri has found multiple ways to pass bomb holders through metal detectors at airports, including surgically implanting bombs in helpless pets. Not only is the pet victimized, but the hundreds of people on a flight will die from a stunt such as this! No animal deserves to die in that way. From here, I want to know what triggers owners specifically to abuse their pets, what type of abuse happens to animals in labs instead of homes, and how people can prevent this from happening besides donating.
Thanks for reading, click here for further links and a bibliography.
hoarded pet rats (above); source
abused puppy in intense care (below); source
