Yet another incident of heinous, senseless cruelty to animals. A dead dog was found by children and teachers on Friday morning in Amaliada, hanged from the school fence of the 3rd Junior High School. It had probably been tortured first, as the wall of the school yard was covered in blood. Warning: graphic photo.
The crime is double: firstly to the poor dog, and secondly to shock the pupils and teachers as they arrived at school at the start of the school year. The very public location suggests the perpetrator(s) were making some kind of a sick statement.
When I first came to Greece I was struck by the number of stray cats and dogs. Many pet owners think it is unnatural to sterilise their pets, it goes against their nature etc. But these same "animal lovers" then leave the unwanted kittens and puppies to die in cartons by the roadside, tied up in plastic bags left on the road to be run over, or dispose of them in other ways.
Incidents of poisoning are not uncommon. Someone is annoyed by barking or mewing and leaves some poisoned meat lying around. Death is slow and painful, and does not discriminate between strays and pets--in my old neighbourhood, a neighbour lost a beautiful pet dog to a poisoner.
Beasts of burden are overworked, beaten, left to stand in the hot sun for hours with the saddle or load strapped to their backs. The same goes for those cute donkeys and ponies for tourist rides, and the horses who pull the carriages in some tourist areas. Guard dogs are chained or locked up in yards, underfed and unprotected against the elements--one particularly cold winter a chained dog was found frozen to death.
Also, now with the financial crisis more and more grown pets are being dumped to fend for themselves. I saw several elderly dogs roaming my old neighbourhood, legs stiff with arthritis, searching for food when they should have been pampered after years of affection and service. Several years ago I found a younger dog with two broken fore legs which had knitted askew. The vet fees must have been too much, so her "master" took the cheap way out and turned her out, still wearing her collar. I tried to take her in but my landlady was adamantly against it and I ended up taking her to an animal shelter. My son and I still remember her with guilt.
The weekly magazine with one of the Sunday newspapers has a page each week with stories of animals rescued from negligent owners, or plain stupid owners who leave their dogs to bake in a car with closed windows, or strays, with photos of animals in need of a loving home. I've seen classified ads of owners who want to give away their pets, in some cases pedigreed (meaning expensive food and vet fees). I guess at least they are trying to find homes for them, not just driving to an area far from their home and leaving the animal there so it can't return to them. But I cannot understand how one can share one's life with a living creature for several years and then just abandon it. I once found a very large tortoise in a dumpster. Luckily it was on top of the rubbish, I heard it scrabbling and found a shop nearby to buy a zipped bag so I could transport it to a park and release it. Was it so much trouble for the owner to do this if they got tired of caring for it, or to take it back to the countryside where it had been taken from? This was a live animal, not potato peels. If the rubbish had been collected it before I (or any other animal lover) happened to walk by, it would have been crushed to death by the compactor.
All these stories, and I have come across far too many of them over the years, pale before deliberate torture of a defenseless creature. The dog at the beginning of this post looks small in the photo. It would not have been able to put up much of a fight against its executioner(s). I hope they are found, but there are so many crimes being committed against humans, such as old pensioners beaten to death during burglaries, or gagged and left to die, that this little dog is not likely to be high on the list of police priorities.
I have chosen to write about this incident before writing about the crimes against humans (which will come in another post) because I was so shocked when I saw it on the internet news today, and because it indicates the fabric of society is unravelling. In the words of Gandhi, 'the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated'.
The crime is double: firstly to the poor dog, and secondly to shock the pupils and teachers as they arrived at school at the start of the school year. The very public location suggests the perpetrator(s) were making some kind of a sick statement.
When I first came to Greece I was struck by the number of stray cats and dogs. Many pet owners think it is unnatural to sterilise their pets, it goes against their nature etc. But these same "animal lovers" then leave the unwanted kittens and puppies to die in cartons by the roadside, tied up in plastic bags left on the road to be run over, or dispose of them in other ways.
Incidents of poisoning are not uncommon. Someone is annoyed by barking or mewing and leaves some poisoned meat lying around. Death is slow and painful, and does not discriminate between strays and pets--in my old neighbourhood, a neighbour lost a beautiful pet dog to a poisoner.
Beasts of burden are overworked, beaten, left to stand in the hot sun for hours with the saddle or load strapped to their backs. The same goes for those cute donkeys and ponies for tourist rides, and the horses who pull the carriages in some tourist areas. Guard dogs are chained or locked up in yards, underfed and unprotected against the elements--one particularly cold winter a chained dog was found frozen to death.
Also, now with the financial crisis more and more grown pets are being dumped to fend for themselves. I saw several elderly dogs roaming my old neighbourhood, legs stiff with arthritis, searching for food when they should have been pampered after years of affection and service. Several years ago I found a younger dog with two broken fore legs which had knitted askew. The vet fees must have been too much, so her "master" took the cheap way out and turned her out, still wearing her collar. I tried to take her in but my landlady was adamantly against it and I ended up taking her to an animal shelter. My son and I still remember her with guilt.
The weekly magazine with one of the Sunday newspapers has a page each week with stories of animals rescued from negligent owners, or plain stupid owners who leave their dogs to bake in a car with closed windows, or strays, with photos of animals in need of a loving home. I've seen classified ads of owners who want to give away their pets, in some cases pedigreed (meaning expensive food and vet fees). I guess at least they are trying to find homes for them, not just driving to an area far from their home and leaving the animal there so it can't return to them. But I cannot understand how one can share one's life with a living creature for several years and then just abandon it. I once found a very large tortoise in a dumpster. Luckily it was on top of the rubbish, I heard it scrabbling and found a shop nearby to buy a zipped bag so I could transport it to a park and release it. Was it so much trouble for the owner to do this if they got tired of caring for it, or to take it back to the countryside where it had been taken from? This was a live animal, not potato peels. If the rubbish had been collected it before I (or any other animal lover) happened to walk by, it would have been crushed to death by the compactor.
All these stories, and I have come across far too many of them over the years, pale before deliberate torture of a defenseless creature. The dog at the beginning of this post looks small in the photo. It would not have been able to put up much of a fight against its executioner(s). I hope they are found, but there are so many crimes being committed against humans, such as old pensioners beaten to death during burglaries, or gagged and left to die, that this little dog is not likely to be high on the list of police priorities.
I have chosen to write about this incident before writing about the crimes against humans (which will come in another post) because I was so shocked when I saw it on the internet news today, and because it indicates the fabric of society is unravelling. In the words of Gandhi, 'the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated'.
No comments:
Post a Comment