A big issue in our community is animal cruelty which is a form of hurting or abusing animals. The specific topics regarding our community problem are history, description, effects, statistics, and organizations that help solve community problems. The abused animals are a big problem, but the fact that it sometimes goes unreported makes it worse. Animal abuse is often overlooked because animals are seen as less than humans, but animal abuse is equally as important and serious as abuse towards other human beings. Not only that, but often the two types of abuses are intertwined.
In fact, people who are in an abusive environment are more likely to take part in animal abuse because it is a learned behavior. In the article CSI: Animal Abuse, Genevieve Rajewski states, “ In a 1983 study of New Jersey families investigated for child abuse and neglect, children had abused pets in one-third of the homes- using the animals as scapegoats for their anger”. Since the children have been on the receiving end of abuse and neglect, their way of letting go of that anger is by abusing their pets to be on the other side of this negative relationship. They release their anger in this form because that is the only way they know how to since that is the way they witnessed their parents do it.
There is a common belief that animals are less than humans, but this does not mean that they do not experience pain the same way humans do. In fact, Mark Bekoff an evolutionary biologist and author states, “Mammals share the same nervous system, neurochemicals, perceptions, and emotions, all of which are integrated into the experience of pain”. Abuse towards humans affects them emotionally and physically, which is the same result within animals when they are abused. This refutes a common misconception that animals are less than humans so animal abuse is not as important. But, if they suffer the same way humans do then animal abuse is just as serious. The only true difference is that they are not able to communicate their suffering through the use of words like humans do, but that does not mean it is nonexistent.
In the past, animal cruelty has been highlighted as a really big problem around the globe. Throughout generations animals are being mistreated by humans all over the world. The animals in the past were not treated any better than they are now. Animal cruelty is an ongoing isuue which began long before we were born and has conntinues to this day. According to The History of Animal Protection in the United States “people who tried to stop animal cruelty are not recognized anymore”. The people of other generations who have tried to put a stop to animal cruelty were not credited properly because no one from the current generations knows someone who tries defending the animals.
An example of animal cruelty is how people abuse horses. A lot of people make horses run an excessive amount of distances in order to train them for horse racing. The horses are just being used for people to make money by betting on which horse is going to gallop the fastest. This is a clear example of animal abuse against horses because of how they are treated while being raced. In addition, the fact that humans ride the horses is abusive because the horses most likely don’t want to have extra weight on them nor go where the human is telling them to go. Horses to this day are also still being used for the same practice in many places around the world.
Another example of animal abuse is people who hunt animals. This is considered abuse because the animals that are in the wild living their life are just trying to survive but are being hunted down by hunters just so they can obtain a part of the animal. For example when hunters hunt for elephants or rhinos they only kill them because the animal is trying to defend itself from getting their tusks and horn taken away.
The most important effect regarding animal cruelty is the major amount of mistreatment to the animals and the looks of physical abuse that the animals are left in. According to Kelly Dedel in Animal Cruelty she says, “Animal cruelty includes many kinds of mistreatment, from temporarily failing to provide essential care to the malicious killing or repeated torturing of an animal”. What she means by this quote is that we humans don’t take care of our animals and these behaviors have become a chain reaction. That’s a major problem because nothing will change to improve animal cruelty until attention is really brought to this issue. Another effect on animal cruelty is that animals who have been abused don’t have trust in humans anymore, this results in them acting savage. That’s a major effect because if the animal cannot be tamed or if it can’t be helped then they have to put down the animal. Another thing similar to this is that animal abuse can leave the animal very hurt and those injuries can make the animal look unlovable. In some cases, pets have died due to the major injuries that the owner has caused. It has increased the amount of death seen in animals. Research has shown that people who are animal abusers are at a high risk of interpersonal violence. The last negative effect that animal abuse is bad public health. In some cases, the abusers house is usually filthy because the lack of attention to the pet. So of course if the owner doesn’t like the pet, he won’t pick up the droppings and won’t clean the urine.
In the article Animal Cruelty Facts: Laws, Stats and How to Report A Concern it states, “66,000 dogs and 21,000 cats are used for testing every year for pharmaceutical drugs, carcinogens and killing pregnant animals”. And that all 50 states are allowed to hunt animals but some rules and regulations forbid over-hunting and killing native species. According to their research, most of the people who abuse animals demonstrate a strong association between animal cruelty and other crimes such as vandalism, illegal possession of drugs and guns and that participation in animal cruelty in childhood shows that they were aggressive and anti-social behavior.
According to humanesociety.org, “there are some officers that were arrested due to cockfights and the U.S. drug enforcement agency were prosecuted in multiple cases where drug cartels were running narcotics through cockfights and dogfighting operation”. Looking at their survey there are 71 percent of domestic violence victims reported that their abuser also abuses animals and they found that pet abuser also was physically abused by their family. According to dosomething.org they state that “two point seven million dogs and cats are killed every year because animal shelters are full and there are not enough adoptive homes”. This means that we need to let people know how many animals are being killed because of the small amount of shelters.
The organization provides for the animals in their shelter by feeding them and giving them a clear living space within their shelter. The animal shelter that we visited stated that they had around 150 animals that were mostly stray. The capacity of the shelter in East Valley is 200 animals. The organization tries their best to find animals a real home and they say that at least 1 to 4 cats or dogs are adopted a week. Although, they are more adoptions over the weekends compared to weekdays. According to the shelter they say that they have to euthanize the animals after 10 to 20 days if they are not adopted. There are a couple of million animals euthanized a year by animal shelters. The animal’s bodies get disposed into a freezer or they are thrown out and usually, that is what animal shelters are forced to do because they can’t keep their freezers stocked up.
The East Valley animal shelter contains many different animals such as dogs, cats, turtles, and bunnies. In the shelter, they gain support for the animals by other people volunteering to help take care of the animals. Another thing the shelter does is it gets funds through advertisements and certain taxes. Lastly, the organization left off with telling how we can help them by coming to adopt an animal or volunteer.
We can help our organization further their goals by helping them take care of animals. We can volunteer at a shelter and help the animals get adopted. Another way we can help is by creating an add to help raise money for supplies that the animal shelter needs. A viable plan that can be used to improve the amount of animal cruelty is to speak up when you see an act of animal abuse. Also we can help the animal shelters get animals adopted or foster them ourselves until we find them a good and rightful owner. We can set up a social media account in order to advertise the abused animals. Also if you notice any animal abuse yourself try to step in and stop the act of violence. Another thing we can do is inform the people around us about animal cruelty and get them to join the progress of stoping animal cruelty. We could help the problem by trying to help people that can’t take care of the animals due to their lack of mental resources. There are many ways to help this community problem. In the end are last attempt to stop animal cruelty is to make a petition and try to get stricter laws for how you take care of your animals and how shelters need to take care of animals. It’ll take time but at the end when trying to help each and every abused animal, it will be all worth it.
