Animal Cruelty

Stopping Animal Cruelty In Its Tracks

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While often overlooked, the abuse of animals continues to be a growing problem.

Everyday pets are abandoned, starved, and left for dead by uncaring, apathetic, and self-

proclaimed ‘animal lovers.’ However, the cruelty doesn’t end there. Commercial wide farmers

and Puppy mill breeders, such as Puppy Love and those who supply Walmart’s meat selection,

constantly over breed their animals to the brink of death and leave undesirable pups, kittens, and

cattle, left to die without even giving them a chance at life. We all need to take the steps forward

to enforce, learn about, and cease animal cruelty all together once and for all.

When adopting a new pet, there aren’t many restrictions or back-ground checks to

determine if the adoptee is going to be capable of providing a safe and comfortable environment

for that animal. All someone needs to do is fill out a short form and give money for an adoption

fee. Having said this, many repeat animal abusers can easily adopt one animal after another to

fuel their sick addiction of torturing them and eventually killing them once they’ve had their fun

to just continue the cycle yet again with their next pure, unsuspecting victim. However, the

blame doesn’t just fall on these twisted individuals. Adoption centers also share the

responsibility to protect these animals, but instead they would rather sell innocent puppies and

kittens to monsters just to make a profit to benefit themselves.

Aside from adoption centers, large scale breeders and dreadful puppy mills are over

glorified for having pure bred animals at a pricey cost. What these places don’t allow the public
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to see is the emotional and physical scarring from overbreeding, the neglect and death of the self-

proclaimed undesirable newborn animals, and the revolting environment in which they are kept

until being sold. According to the WKYT, over 300 dogs were rescued from a trailer home in

West Tennessee. Many dogs were in labor when they arrived and more found in critical

condition littered with infections and parasites. Upon further investigation of the property, a shed

was found with dozens of corpses of dogs, some of which were already far into the decaying

process( WKYD, 2020).You would think that the abusers would have had faced terrible

repercussions, yet they didn’t. No one was even arrested for this unspeakable crime. The laws in

Tennessee protected these poor excuses of human beings from any type of sentencing other than

forcing them to clean the property to proper living conditions for humans. The way the laws are

set is to make one believe that our furry companions are unreachable from cruelty, but instead

only protect the vile creatures that administer their demise.

While we have a select few of caring farmers, we also have tons more that neglect their

animals in order to produce a larger quantity of product. They overbreed cows, pigs, horses,

goats, and even chickens just to keep them in an overbearingly small area for most of their lives.

The only release from this is when they are brought to slaughter. These farm animals live their

lives sleeping in their own feces and breathing in their own toxic fumes until the day that they

die. They hardly ever know their mother since they are ripped away from them the moment that

they pop out of the womb. If not used for the making of an outrageous amount of food, these

animals are taken into the field to be slashed at, kicked, and overworked in order to make the

workload of the farmer just a tad bit easier.

Consumers are also at fault for the continued mistreatment of these animals. We spend

our money at popular, corporate wide grocery stores and puppy mills like Puppy Love and the
Animal Cruelty

Canton Dog Alley. No, we may not be buying a pet, but we do buy their pet supplies and up their

revenue. We also tend to buy everything in bulk from nationwide stores and waste around 26.6%

of the meat that we purchase ( U.S.D.A, 2019). This has to stop. No more buying a new, cute

collar from a name brand store or buying pounds and pounds of meat at a time. Instead, try

looking into your local humane societies and view what they have to offer. They often have

better quality items, and their profits go into providing healthcare for strays and lowering the

costs for medicines and vaccines that are necessary for new pet owners. Also, try going to your

local farmers market and see what they have to offer. Local farmers are generally nicer to their

cattle and are not pressured to over breed their animals to provide for a top, nationwide grocery

store food chain, like Walmart. If you don’t have a local farmers market, try going vegetarian or

doing a no meat Monday. Today, there are loads of options for meat replacement that taste and

feel just like the real thing without killing any animals to produce it.

On another note, a lot can be learned about the mind from those who abuse animals.

Usually, these individuals were subjected to violence in their early childhood and project it back

unto animals as a way to relieve their tensions and anger. Children illustrate mental illnesses in

the form of animal abuse at a young age and should be monitored by parents to help both the

child and the animal. Studying why people abuse animals contains valuable knowledge as to how

to halt the continuous abuse and treat mental illnesses in each individual. Sadly, we have not yet

provided enough research into this topic. We can’t expect to help these animals without first

treating and understanding those who feel inclined to hurt these animals. In my experience,

seeing and adopting a Yorkipoo that was underweight and covered in fleas was very

disheartening, but what was worse was seeing the type of person that allows this to happen. It is
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evident that they are not getting the correct mental support that they need to function as a

morally correct human being.

Stopping animal cruelty won’t be the easiest thing to do, but we can take small, decisive

steps forward in order to protect our neighboring creatures from ourselves and each other while

simultaneously learning more about our own mental and physical health. Taking these steps to

halt animal cruelty makes us better people to one another and protects our future environment

from further neglect.