To me aninmal cruelty is the next step towards cruelty to this level to people. Why do we let animals who are damaged by people accused of cruelty continue on at all - especially when we know that know when it will be worse when people go from abuser to serial abuser ( because an animal does't just take up understand that the factor that people may people hit a pet once? It is always seminals who take on words to the worse criminal lines... ) We have signs at the vet school pointing out that a) that an user of animals is probably an abuser of people and b) that signs of child/spouse/animal might me signs of abuse of another - that's why vets are mandatory reporters of animal, child, and elder abuse - it's felt that vets might see signs of this earlier.
I agree with this. In our opthomolgogy with 8 different puppies so that 7 of of us were sharing a very shy puppy as our "demo dog" and he didn't act like a puppy - he was a good little guy but frightened, cowed, wouldn't walk on a leash... That's the way the world works unfortunately. He spent for him an hour - that's for him a frightened hour (even though we weren't hurting him) and then it took 5 minutes for me to play with him out in the snow before he finally figured out what a puppy was supposed to act like - not all cowed and afraid but payful and happy. (It was so cute watching him finally figure out that snow was fun!)
He was a great little guy - it was great showing him what it was it fun was vs. what scary was. Even though we did some "scary" did some opthamalogy stuff on him, we still made sure he had some fun and did a little bit of "real fun" puppy playing in the snow. So he was a good little guy even with his his many blocks to "normal". (It was cool to see him go from afraid in the corner to wanting to play with the other puppies and rolling in the snow. )
This little puppy is going to make a good dog for someone some day. He was a great little guy. It was great to see him wake up and want to play in the snow rather than be afraid than how he was when he started - so scared that I had to carry him. He may have had a lot have scarey stuff to get over - but he was a great little guy in the end. I hope group #2, after we were done learning the in's and out's of the opthamology exam and how you do it, who had to to deal with puppy number #1 - I hope we learned some opthamology and at the same time we taught little puppy #1 that the build that the world isn't such a very scary place when you're brave and you pee in the snow.
- that even if stuff is weird you can still go outside and and it's okay to play and have fun....
Any way it was a nice lab with a puppy that needed some love - we had a good time and learned a lot. And if any one wants to adopt a fuzzy little black puppy who is mega-cute: that's an option too.
-e