Adopting animals is a fun experience every kid dreams about. When I was around seven my family and I went to Petsmart to adopt a rescue dog. Just think about all those cute animals that need a loving and caring home. It warmed my heart thinking about all the fun filled memories I’d soon make with this new puppy. However, before coming to my loving home this defenseless dog had experienced many beatings, starvation, and neglect. With that crucial fact in my mind, all animals should be treated with care instead of laxness. Animal abuse can stem from mental health problems, former abuse and it’s just flat out wrong to abuse a defenseless animal.
According to U.S. animal shelter around 6.5 billion pets experience abuse worldwide every year. Who would beat a small defenseless animal? Animals have a beating heart, they’re creatures that experience pain and emotions just like you and me. Celebrities like PINK have denounced animal abuse and stated that it’s something no animal should go through. Yet, in some states animal cruelty isn’t considered a felony with no laws in place for it. Most think this problems mainly in America, but what they don’t realize is that other countries have a worse reputation than us. In South Africa over 3 billion animals experience cruelty, that’s almost half of the world wide abuse rate. Animal consciousness, or animal awareness, is the quality or state of self-awareness within an animal, or of being aware of an external object or something within itself.
Conscious and feeling emotions isn’t the only reason why it’s wrong.A difficult childhood could also branch out to animal abuse. Kids who experience mistreatment or neglect are more likely to abuse an animal. Meaning for every mistreated animal there’s a mistreated child in theory. Statistics show that 30 percent of children who have witnessed domestic abuse have reenacted it upon their pets. Children need to learn that this behavior that they have witnessed is wrong at a young age. If kids aren’t taught that it could branch into even deadlier consequences. Kids shouldn’t take their built up anger and emotions on an animal that did nothing to them, it’s morally and physically wrongful.
Animal abuse can lead to harming others as well. When children learn abusive behavior from a young age they tend to act on it when they’re older only on a larger scale. If a child disrespects a defenseless animal what’s to say they wouldn’t do that to a human. Humans and animals are relatively the same, we both feel emotions. Psychologists say children who are cruel to animals is the first warning sign of later delinquency, violence, and criminal behavior. Studies since the 1970’s also prove this disturbing fact, some past killer also showed this behavior at a young age. We need to stop the abuse at the root of the problem, before a child turns into an adult. So then we can try and prevent future problems or future abuse on even more animals.
Many alternatives to abusing an animal exist, like therapy. When will people realize abusing animals leads to a miserable life and affects a living breathing creatures emotions wrongfully. People need to realize animals feel emotions and pain just like humans. An animal abuser could go on to become so much worse, meaning it needs to stop now before it develops into an even bigger problem. With saying that I’m hopeful that with the help of people in our communities, we will empower ourselves to make a change that will benefit everyone and prevent the heartache.
