Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Buzzkill

It was a grim news evening last night. Not sure why it all came pouring in at once but it did. If you're in the midst of enjoying a nice relaxing cup of coffee and you don't want to lose that feeling of serenity just yet, you may want to move on.

1. Another responsible Ontario dog owner is being punished for owning a dog that looks like a Pit Bull. Danny Truong's vet snitched on him to Mississauga Animal Control telling them that Danny had a Pit Bull. Danny claims the dog is a Rott-Boxer mix but he'll have to prove it or else his dog will either get killed by MAC or shipped out of province. "Bowser another Rambo case?" is the main story but Caveat's got some additional details.

2. A New Brunswick man who had decided to smash in the heads of his Pomeranian puppies rather than give them up to the SPCA, who were trying to take his dogs and charge him with negligence, gets a $550 fine. He managed to kill 5 of his 13 dogs with a hammer and said he would have killed the rest but didn't have enough time before animal control officers stopped him.

In what must be one of the most twisted statements I've ever heard, this abhorrent monster told the court that he "loved the dogs so desperately" and "It was the worst day of my life when I had to do that to my babies."

Other than the fine, the man is acquitted of all animal cruelty charges and cannot own a dog for a year. That should give him lots of time to buy some more hammers.

N.B. man reduced to tears in dog killing defence

N.B. man acquitted of animal cruelty in dog deaths

(Thanks, I think, to Joan of Me and my dogs in Halifax, Nova Scotia for the heads up on this one.)

3. On a lighter note, 'Don the Dog Guy,' who lied about caring for dogs saved from Hurricane Katrina, gets a year in prison. He took on 28 Katrina dogs from Best Friends Animal Society along with $36,720 and promised to care for them and find them homes but instead most of them ended up dead. Don Chambers went so far in his con as to take phony photos of all the dogs in their happy new homes and sent them off to Best Friends as proof of the great job he was doing.

" ...of the 28 dogs given to Chambers, just three were placed in homes. Ten were euthanized at the Lorain County Kennel. One died in a dog fight. One died of untreated heartworms. Three died and were tossed into a trash bin. Six are unaccounted for. Best Friends took back three of them."

4. This is the most disturbing one of all. It happened on the other side of the planet in Australia about three months ago to a JRT puppy named Peanut and I only heard about it yesterday but nevertheless, here it is. Proceed at your own risk to ruining your day. I'm not joking.

Actually, forget it. I'm not providing a link. Sorry. At some point, this is like posting links to murder victims. It's real but it's gratuitous.

Evil flows deep and wide.
Posted by Fred

9 comments:

Lynda said...

Thanks for sparing us. I have such a macabre sense of being and as hard as I try, just cannot bring myself to look away.

But I do appreciate you posting all the rest. If we don't put this information out there, then we just keep the rest of the world ignorant.

February 4, 2009 at 3:25 PM
Anonymous said...

Just a thought...why not get a DNA test done on your dog to prove or disprove parentage. Some of them are available for $59. Would you then perhaps have a harrassment suit on your hands if you can prove the breed lineage of your dog. I would certainly consider it...lot cheaper than a lawyer. BTW, if there is no such breed as a pitbull there is not much chance of that showing up in a DNA lineage test...so how would they prove your dog is.......

February 4, 2009 at 4:29 PM
Anonymous said...

I just don't know what to say.

February 4, 2009 at 5:38 PM
Anonymous said...

Thank you for not providing a link. About two years ago, I read a horrifying story about some monsters (teens) that committed the most horrifying abuse to a puppy in Atlanta. You may recall the case. Ultimately, I think the brothers (named Moulder) got some time. In any event, i'll spare the details. But those cases, and the likes of Kensington the cat, AK the dog...I can't shake them. I still lose sleep over them. So whatever happened to Peanut, I'm sorry.

What I'd like to know is, how do we stop them? So many people wait until people that hurt animals "upgrade" to humans. Even the current hydro zappings are an example. Just look at how many people commenting in newspapers cried foul along the lines of 'thank god it wasn't a child'. As if it's okay it was a dog. People like you are changing the world. But how do you cope. I want to do more. I just don't know how or what without landing myself in jail.

February 4, 2009 at 7:02 PM
Fred said...

Lynda, Monica, that post was a bit much wasn't it? It feels like I've got a hangover of my psyche. I realized that when I couldn't get to sleep last night. I'm going to try not to do a post like that again cuz it's like, "Hey, come read my blog. It'll make you feel like shit afterwards. Yah!"

Joanne, I don't know about the exact wording of the law but it seems to me that the onus is on the owner to prove the dog is not a Pit Bull type dog - kind of like guilty until proven innocent - and you got to do the proving - so I'm not sure a harrassment charge would stick since the law itself is "harrassment". Also, playing the game by proving the pedigree of one's dog may save that particular dog, and that would of course be a good thing, but really, I don't think this breed discrimination should be happening in the first place.

Borderjack, all I do is walk and hang out with dogs, take their photos and regurgitate what I see, hear and read. I'm like a junior reporter that gets his feet wet but the water never goes past my knees - so the coping's not too difficult. As for how to stop the abusers? We can't stop them. We can only beat them to a pulp afterwards. Oh wait, you mentioned something about not going to jail? I guess that chucks that idea.

February 4, 2009 at 8:12 PM
Anonymous said...

The only proven effective way to make people change is to make it extremely uncomfortable to remain with the status quo. Therefore, as long as these abusers keep getting sentences that are a joke, nothing will change...there is no incentive for change. Change will come only to those who are severely and negatively impacted for their behaviour and are held accountable. Sorry to say but that is the way it is psyhologically. So the laws must change dramatically and drastically and be implemented without reservation. There is no mercy for those who show none to anything weaker than themselves. It is like children who do not understand the concept of their actions affecting others. They only understand (up to a certain age) of what happens to them. So, with these abusers you are dealing with such emotionally stunted people that they must learn by an equal amount of suffering being imposed on them. There is basically not much hope for them.

February 4, 2009 at 10:09 PM
Fred said...

I have no problem with stricter laws and that'll help but here's the thing. Animals can't speak up to defend themselves. We've got very strict laws against murder and child abuse yet those things continue to happen all the time. What chance does a dog have to expose its abuser? Only the overtly stupid ones will ever get caught.

Maybe abuse can be reduced through education but it will not stop. Abusers abuse because they want to abuse. It's easy, exciting and fun for them. Using a knife or a hammer or a gun or another dog - the spilling of another creature's blood is fun for them.

We keep fighting them and keep patching up the animals they leave behind and we'll have to keep doing this until, well, we just have to keep doing this because they are an incurable disease.

February 4, 2009 at 10:56 PM
House of the Discarded said...

A few months ago, I rescued a kitten from the shelter that was there because someone saw teenage boys playing football with him. They had "punted" him, and thrown him back and forth.

NOTHING happened to these boys. The kitten was taken away and put on death row at an overcrowded shelter.

I'm so fed up with the lack of justice for these abusers. When are people going to get their heads out of their asses and figure out that animal abuse is directly related to abusive anti-social behaviour to people too?

February 5, 2009 at 8:57 AM
Anonymous said...

I think the link to potential human abuse increases the urgency to do something about animal abuse. "It could have been a child" wakes us up to possible danger (if at a glacial speed). But the wrong that is done to animals is justification on its own merits to take action. Why does our species commit these atrocities? By seeing the rest of creation as not-us, we make ourselves the loneliest beings on the planet.

February 5, 2009 at 5:09 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)