You and the World Blog#1:Animal Abuse and Neglect

Posted by Lauren Hummel in English 1 - Dunn on Thursday, November 29, 2012 at 11:58 am

This is the beginning of my ‘You and the World’ project for English class. ‘You and the World’ is a project that will help my classmates and I address an issue that we are interested in that is going on in the world and try to help solve the problem or at least try to be part of the solution by volunteering or raising awareness. Throughout the last three quarters of the school year, three blogs will be created and posted to our Science Leadership blogs and they will each contain information and our progress on the project. By the time we get to the last post, we will have done our volunteering or raised our awareness and put information from what we did into that last post. I chose to address the issue of animal abuse and neglect.

I chose the topic of animal abuse and neglect for multiple reasons. For one, I am a strong animal lover and for a great majority of my life have had a dog that was rescued from a shelter. I also think that animals do not deserve to be beaten and treated the way that they are in some cases. Animals are living and breathing things just like us and they have feelings too so it is not fair for them to have to suffer. The only things most animals need is food, water, a place to sleep and most of all, love. It is not fair that some animals are denied that essential thing.

The true definition of animal neglect according to the HumaneSociety of the United states is "not giving an animal the right food, water, shelter or vet care.” As I stated before, these are essential things all animals needs to survive. If the simple things listed are not supplied, the animals will most likely die and the excruciating pain they go through would be almost equivalent to the pain of animals that are abused or harmed on purpose. It has also been stated by the ‘Humane Society of the United States’ that people that have some sort of emotional problems have a tendency to beat, shoot, stab animals or even set them on fire and the people who do this are likely to do the same types of things to people. Neglect and abandonment is the most common form of animal cruelty and neglect causes animals to be extremely unhealthy in size and weight as shown in this Neglect PDF.

Animal neglect and the different stages of body condition

http://www.pet-abuse.com/media/pdfs/body_conditioning.pdf

According to statisticbrain.com there are a total of 5,000 animal shelters in America and about 5 million companion animals enter into one of them each year. Of the ones that enter the shelter, roughly 3.5 million of them are euthanized. Approximately 70 million homes across America own at least 1 companion animal, about 5 million of these animals go into shelters each year and 3.5 million animals in the shelter are euthanized. You do the math because any way you put it, too many animals are without homes or are being killed.

Chart of statistics of animals in shelters

http://www.statisticbrain.com/animal-shelter-statistics/

In recent news, ‘Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2’ the last movie of the best selling series by Stephanie Meyer, was recently released in theaters. In the after-party for the series final film, there were caged wolves meant to be for entertainment which raised a great speculation by PETA(people for the ethical treatment of animals). A spokeswoman for PETA questioned, “Didn’t it dawn on the ‘Twilight’ event organizers that real wolves do not belong at a party with blaring music and flashing lights?” This all happened after an actress in ‘Twilight,’ Christian Serratos, worked with PETA on a ad promoting people to go vegetarian and Kellan Lutz with an ad to adopt animals, not buy them and countless other ‘Twilight’ actors and actresses ads for PETA. This contradicts what ‘Twilight’ has been really trying to support alongside PETA to love animals and treat them with love and respect. Hopefully, they can regain their ground and get their good word back with PETA.

Kellan Lutz with his adopted dog Kola to ‘Adopt, Don’t Buy’ pets for PETA.

KellanLutzw/Kola:AdoptDon’tBuy

B. Christian Serratos posing for an ad to go vegetarian for PETA.

ChristianSerratos:GoVegetarian

C. Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart on a walk with their adopted dog, Bear.

Robert&Kristinw/Bear

There are still many aspects of animal neglect that I want to look into and get more research on. Things like where animal abuse is most common and possibly why people think it is so common there. I am also wondering what people can do directly to help these animals besides donate and adopt because some people are not economically able to donate and others are allergic or lack the space and as a result can not adopt. As I get deeper into this project, I hope to learn the different reasons that people have for hurting their companions.I also hope to really help to make a difference in the lives of some of the affected animals through the service part of this ‘You and the World’ project. Too many animals are being hurt and killed for too may silly reasons. Join me in my efforts to help these animals live a better life.

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