Animal Abuse
The inspiration of this reflection paper came after I was playing with my dog in the snow. My dog’s name is Skyler, she is a Husky/Border Collie and she absolutely loves playing in the snow. She truly is a man’s best friend. After coming inside to warm up, I thought about how lucky myself, and others are to have pets in their life. Then I thought to myself, how much of a low-life it takes to harm an animal that is full of love and happiness, it saddens me.
I am the type of person who would get sad if I ran over a squirrel while driving. Even though we are taught to not swerve out of the way for small wildlife because it may cause harm to yourself, or others around you, it would still make me sad. A life is a life, no matter how big or how small; and every life should be treated with respect. I am also not the type of person to go hunting just for fun or sport, but I do eat meat for nutritional purposes. In my opinion, I don’t think it is “fun” to kill an animal for entertainment. If it is for food, then that is another story because humans have been hunting for food for years and years.
I have seen videos circling on Twitter and Facebook of people who abuse animals with captions along the lines of “share this post so we can catch these horrible people”. My first thought is that these people are just trying to get popular off of something disgusting but this is a rant for another day. The videos are very disturbing and range along the lines of cats being thrown against walls, to dogs being picked up by their tail and thrown off of buildings in developing countries. While on the same topic of videos, I would like to mention the rehabilitation videos of abused animals which are both disturbing and heartwarming. These videos can mostly be found on Facebook, Youtube and infomercials.
My main question is WHY? What kind of satisfaction do people get when abusing animals? These people are crazy! I was watching a crime show a while ago that I can’t seem to recall, perhaps it was Criminal Minds, but I learned that people who kill or abuse animals are showing early signs of a psychopath. Again, I am not certain to what show this was but it definitely makes sense.
In my opinion, people who abuse and/or kill animals should get similar, if not the same consequences as someone who assaults and/or kills a person. Cats, dogs etc are ALIVE, therefore they should be treated with the same rights and respect as people. Domestic animals do not have many ways of defending themselves from humans; hell even wild animals do not have many ways of defending themselves because humans are at the top of the food chain and have many ways to kill other beings. With that said, shouldn’t people who abuse/kill animals receive more severe consequences because the animals cannot defend themselves? Sure a dog may be able to bite you but that won’t stop a human with a weapon.
I am curious to what other people think in regard to this topic. Am I out of line? Should people who abuse animals receive the same punishment as someone who abuses a person? One of my main goals in life is to graduate university with a major in criminology to later become a police officer and detective. I would also consider joining the K9 Unit in the police force to work closely with the dogs of the law. With my position in law enforcement, it would make me extremely happy to catch the people who abuse animals and humans and place them behind bars. There is no room for people like that in this world and they deserve to be locked up for the crime that they commit.
Animal abuse should be taken very seriously. It should not be shrugged off nor should we look the other way when it happens. We need to cherish every single life because there is only a single life to live.
