Animal Cruelty (Blog #2)


      Recently many of you have read my first blog that I posted portioning to my interest and need to help animals who are abused and mistreated. I believe in rights for all animals, no matter the size or the species; they are all living creatures of this world just like us, with no voice needing someone to speak up for them. Since my last blog post, I have expanded my research creating new things to examine how people think and view animal cruelty.

I have created a survey containing questions and suggestions on animal cruelty and how I can impact the lives of many animals. A few of the questions were: do you think animals should have rights? If you saw a sick, beaten up animal would you help, and etc. I have received many interesting results; almost 100% of the people who took the survey said that they do care about animal cruelty. 80% percent said that they think animals should have rights, 15% were unsure. 


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Screen Shot 2013-01-18 at 7.12.58 PM
A screen shot of the Animal Cruelty Survey.


It was very interesting to see that 50% of the people were unsure when they were asked if they thought humans are better then animals, 20% said they were better then animals and 30% said they weren't. I then asked if they saw someone abusing an animal would they say or do something and why? 67% said yes and majority of the people said “some animals don’t have the ability to defend themselves against human beings” and then compared them to humans in a similar situation. I also asked if they think animal abuse was wrong, one response really stuck out to me it said “Depends upon the circumstances. For example say you’re trying to teach your cat not to climb on the table by smacking it whenever it climbs up on the table. Obviously thats aggressive but thats how psychological reinforcement works.” 
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Screen Shot 2013-01-18 at 7.14.28 PM
A screen shot of the Animal Cruelty Results.


I found this statement to shine a light on a new issue, it’s may be a draw-back  to my whole argument but it’s a topic that's not addressed when animal cruelty is approached. When we think of animal abuse do we think of abuse that is used to train our animals? Many Americans think it’s just a traditional way to raise our animals to behave in a proper manner. To get a better understanding, I would like many of you to weigh in: Do you think that physical aggressiveness used to raise our domestic pets is consider to be animal abuse? I have read an article examining wether it’s effective to hit your dog or not.

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Screen Shot 2013-01-18 at 7.21.16 PM
A photo how a pet owner hitting his cat to stop her from climbing up on things.


Most people believe that physical dominance techniques are the best possibility for dog’s with aggressive behavior because dogs are pack animals. By the dog’s having a leader in their packs they best respond to a dominate figure. So the question is “does physical force inflicted on your dog work ?” The article’s response to it was “ it depends on what you mean by work.” Sometimes by hitting your dog it can discontinue aggressive behavior when applied in the proper manner, however it can cause a large amounts of serious injuries, increase stress and in most cases increase the dog’s aggressive behavior. Majority of people claim that these techniques are more effective because we the human become the leader to our dog(s). However just because dogs are pack animals it does not lead to the conclusion that that is the only way that your dog can understand what’s wrong or right. Also that’s not the only way that they can be taught, there are other techniques such as saying “no” and demonstrating the right behavior and rewarding them when they do the correct thing. 

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blog-dog-abuse-ist2_274710_pet_abuse
A photo of a pet owner waving a rolled up news paper at his dog to teach him a lesson for misbehaving.


In a way that can be considered animal abuse and it may also be an effective way of training your animal, but one thing for sure  beating, aggressively kicking, stabbing and many other things is in fact animal abuse and it should not be permitted by any means necessarily. This world should be aware that animals are living creatures on the earth just like us. They have emotions and can feel physical pain; it’s time to treat animals with respect and most of all love. Let’s start a movement and END ANIMAL CRUELTY TODAY!!! 

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Screen Shot 2013-01-18 at 7.24.39 PM
A photo of three civilians beating a dog in the middle of the street with sticks. 
​Here in a link to my Annotative Bibliography.

Stay tune for my next and finally blog post containing my "Agent of Change"; it will be something worth waiting for. Thank you!
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Screen Shot 2013-01-21 at 6.03.30 PM

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