Written by Michelle Kretzer
A driver in southern Georgia was shocked when she spotted a pitiful-looking dog hanging on for dear life to the top of a crate in the back of a pickup truck that was careening down the interstate. A heavy chain around the animal's neck that was hooked to the top of the crate looked as if it could have choked the dog, but it may well have been the only thing that kept the pup from flying onto the asphalt as the truck whizzed in and out of traffic.
Thinking quickly, the woman immediately got behind the truck and snapped pictures of the dog and the vehicle's license plate. She was shocked to see that the dog was underweight, covered with wounds, and wearing a hunting vest. As soon as she got home, she contacted PETA and forwarded the pictures to us.
PETA's Emergency Response Team traced the license plate to a county in Florida, a state that has a law against transporting animals inhumanely. Forcing a dog to try to hang on for fear of falling out of a speeding vehicle certainly qualifies, so PETA shared the evidence with law-enforcement officials without delay.
In no time, officers were knocking on the teenage driver's door. He admitted that he had used the dog for hunting and then chained the animal in the back of the truck. The teen agreed to turn over the dog as well as five others and was sentenced to 150 hours of community service. The officers took the dogs to a local animal shelter, where they have been put up for adoption.
If you ever see an animal being cruelly transported in the back of a pickup truck, alert authorities. Even if it isn't specifically illegal in your area, you can still ask police to intervene, arguing that not only does it jeopardize the animal's safety, other drivers on the road could also be seriously injured or killed if the dog fell out and caused an accident.
Two PETA staffers were delivering straw bedding to cold "outdoor dogs" in rural Virginia when they spotted a thin young beagle dangerously close to the highway. The staffers had barely gotten out of the car when the friendly dog came bounding up to them. He was wearing a collar with a phone number, so the staffers called the owner after first taking the pup back to PETA's Norfolk headquarters for a much-needed warm bath and good meal.
The man said that he no longer wanted the dog—whom he had never even bothered to name—because, as the saying goes, "That dog don't hunt." (It's not uncommon for hunters simply to abandon unwanted dogs.) But the owner was willing to drive an hour and a half to our headquarters to retrieve the dog's collar.
PETA staffers knew that the gentle dog with the soulful eyes would make someone an ideal animal companion. Not long after he was vaccinated, neutered, treated for Lyme disease and internal parasites, and put up for adoption, Augie found his perfect forever home with a PETA staffer and his family.
The staffer has a 14-year-old son who is now Augie's best friend. And Augie comes to work at the PETA office, brightening everyone's days with his buoyant personality.
As it turned out, the dog who had been cast aside because he wasn't a good hunter had no trouble sniffing out a lovely new life.
Written by Alisa Mullins
sierrasportsman | cc by 2.0
As President Barack Obama prepares to release his blueprint for addressing gun violence in the wake of last month's killings of 26 children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School, PETA has sent him a letter, copying Vice President Joe Biden, with a simple request: Stop pointing to hunting as an example of "responsible" gun ownership. As we explain in our letter, hunting is cruel to the animals who die agonizing and, in many cases, prolonged deaths as well as detrimental to children, who should never be encouraged to hurt or kill animals, since it hardens them to the suffering of others.
Dear Mr. President:
I am writing on behalf of PETA and our more than 3 million members and supporters to ask you, as you prepare your statements this week on gun violence, to reconsider your defense of hunting and shooting animals for sport as a justification for gun ownership. In a news conference five days after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, you stated that "the vast majority of gun owners in America are responsible—they buy their guns legally, and they use them safely, whether for hunting or sport shooting, collection or protection." Yet there is nothing "responsible" about making a sport out of killing, about hunting, or about teaching children to hunt. As the mother of a child in elementary school, I cannot imagine telling my son that killing for fun is wrong when the victim is a human but perfectly acceptable when the target is a member of another species, say, a deer or a dove. Children must be taught that all gun violence is wrong, no matter how different from them the victim appears to be.
This mixed message to children can result in deadly consequences for humans as well as for other living beings. Often, we hear of a killer who, as a child, first enjoyed stalking and hunting or torturing and killing animals in other ways. And hunting can indeed be torture. Many hunting victims are injured but not immediately killed, leaving them to endure prolonged, agonizing deaths. So while a ban on hunting may not be in our immediate future, a change in tone could easily be had with a stroke of your speechwriter's pen.
Americans' views are evolving on many issues, from same-sex marriage to gun control, and the time is right to reconsider the dangerous message that the practice of killing animals for fun is acceptable and should even be protected. The tragedy that our nation experienced in December presents a perfect opportunity to speak out against gun violence of every kind. In your news conference today [January 14], you asked, "What should we be doing to make sure our children are safe and reduce incidents of gun violence?" And you went on, "If there is a step we can take that will save even one child from what happened in Newtown, we should take that step." Supporting hunting not only promotes violence to animals but also puts our children at risk by teaching them that taking aim at a living creature is nothing but sport. Either our country is against senseless violence and slaughter, or it isn't. Please do the right thing. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Respectfully,
Tracy Reiman
Executive Vice President
The Father of the Year Awards aren't until May, but Rep. Paul Ryan needn't hold his breath: PETA has just named Ryan our Bad Dad of 2012, and we're sending him a certificate of dishonor:
Ryan is catching heat for having his 10-year-old daughter pack heat and gun down a deer who was posing a huge threat to the duo by grazing in the woods, unarmed. Instead of spending the Thanksgiving holiday encouraging his child to appreciate nature and be kind to animals who haven't a chance against fancy, high-powered weapons, Ryan was teaching her that killing is terrific stuff. If Ryan's goal was to bond with his daughter, perhaps he should have considered that all animals love their offspring—including deer, whose fawns are sometimes orphaned and left to starve when hunters shoot their parents.
The Congress member's lesson in violence saw him beating out a mother who tied up her baby outside an off-track betting venue, a father who put a child on a motorcycle with a plastic bag over the toddler's head instead of a helmet, and a guy who had his baby tattooed.
We have suggested plenty of helpful or at least harmless activities that Ryan and his children could engage in, such as canoeing, hiking, biking, bird watching, or even clearing the forest of hunters' beer cans and other trash.
If children aren't mature enough to see nude human bodies, are they really mature enough to see people killing for "fun"? PETA has written to the CEO of Hudson News, Joseph DiDomizio, to request that his retail outlets handle hunting magazines in the same way that they would handle any other material that is inappropriate for kids: Store them out of reach and view of minors and allow only adults over the age of 18 to purchase them.
If looking at pornography could encourage kids to become sexually active, as some child advocates suggest, what could looking at magazines that portray killing as exciting and rewarding do to them? We know that many of the school shooters who killed their classmates first hunted animals. As our letter to DiDomizio points out, "Like other forms of casual or thrill violence, hunting spawns a dangerous desensitization to the suffering of others."
Additionally, most children can't fully comprehend the consequences of hunting. For animals such as wolves, who mate for life and live in close-knit family units, hunting tears apart not only families but also entire communities. Baby deer are often orphaned when hunters kill their parents. And many animals who are shot by hunters are injured but not killed, and they are left to starve, die from blood loss, or be attacked by predators.
WH Smith magazine retailers in Great Britain have already implemented an age restriction on the sale of hunting magazines. Impressionable children in the U.S. deserve the same protection.
Written by Jeff Mackey
I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that PETA opposes hunting. After all, it's a no-brainer: Chasing and shooting animals (with a gun or a bow and arrow) causes terror. Mates grieve, young animals can starve when their mothers are killed, and hunting leaves wounded but unrecovered animals to die slowly and wretchedly from blood loss, infection, or predation.
PETA works to end efforts to get ever-younger kids to take up this cruel blood sport because hunting teaches them to see other individuals as objects to exploit and "things" to kill—a very dangerous lesson. Every school shooter has been found to have hunted, and although not every kid who hunts will go on to gun down human beings, people who fire weapons at other living beings destroy a piece of their own heart.
In his article for Psychology Today titled "Do Some People Simply Like to Kill Other Animals?" Dr. Marc Bekoff offers some thought-provoking perspectives on the mind-set of hunters as well as on their self-deceit. Here is an excerpt:
I see no reason to kill other animals for a meal that isn't needed. Every time I read an essay about 'ethical hunting' it makes me reflect on a number of different and challenging issues. One that comes up time and time again is that maybe some people simply like to kill other animals and then offer a wide variety of excuses about their lust for blood (consider also the unrelenting war on wildlife including the wanton killing of wolves, the man who used a trapped wolf for target practice, and the egregious abuse of laboratory animals including chimpanzees). I can easily understand why some hunters offer that 'getting out in nature' or 'getting in touch with nature' or 'having quality family time' are important to them and that's why they hunt. But one can get closer to nature without a gun so there's more to it at least for some people, or so it seems.
I also don't understand how some people can deny the suffering and death(s) for which they're directly responsible. I find that when some people say something like 'Oh, I know they suffer, but I love my steak' it nauseates me. And when they say they love other animals and then kill them I like to say I'm glad they don't love me.
Many people want to rewild their hearts - reconnect with other nature - and it's incredibly easy to do without causing any harm. So, when will the unnecessary killing stop? I hope sooner than later because it's just not necessary to cause harm and to kill to have a healthy meal plan. So, do some people simply enjoy killing other animals? It seems they do or else they wouldn't do it.
iStockphoto.com/KeithSzafranski
Help counter the cruelty of hunting in your area: Post "No Hunting" signs on your land and that of sympathetic neighbors and friends, join or form a local anti-hunting group, protest organized hunts, and spread deer repellent or human hair (from barber shops) near hunting areas. Also, before supporting any wildlife or conservation group, make sure that it opposes hunting.
Written by PETA
Update: Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump's hideous African hunting trip is under investigation by Zimbabwean authorities. Among the potential problems noted by the Zimbabwean Conservation Task Force were the following: The brothers may have illegally used dogs to kill an endangered leopard, the South African safari firm they used was not registered to hunt in Zimbabwe and may not have been cleared by wildlife authorities, and licensing and trophy fees may not have been paid.
Authorities are also investigating the Trumps' claims that they donated meat from the animals they killed to local villagers, as there are no villages near where the brothers hunted. If they are found to be in breach of hunting laws, the Trump brothers and officials from the safari firm could face imprisonment or a fine of up to $500,000.
Johnny Rodrigues, chairperson of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, said, "This is the problem with those who … think they can come to manipulate and control people, destroy natural resources, and say 'we came to help.' We don't want them here."
Hear, hear!
The following text was originally published on March 14, 2012.
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are the targets of more media scrutiny than Barack Obama's birth certificate after pictures surfaced online of the pair posing with wild animals they had killed on safari in Zimbabwe. Each "trophy" was procured for a fee—how macho is that?
Dressed as if to play extras in Rambo, the brothers posed for photographs, including one sick enough to make a grown man, other than a Go Daddy CEO, lose his lunch: Don holds his knife in one hand and the severed tail of an elephant he's shot in the other. An elephant! In another photo, Eric sits atop a Cape buffalo, using the animal's corpse as a gun and hat rack. Another photo shows both brothers standing next to a massive crocodile whom the Great White Bwana Boys no doubt had "the help" hang up by a noose from a tree branch. In a joint statement, the brothers said, "We have the utmost respect for nature and have always hunted in accordance with local laws and regulations." If this conduct constitutes respect, I really don't want to know what their contempt looks like.
Read Ingrid Newkirk's full article on Huffington Post here.
fwooper | cc by 2.0
The young royals are a delight to behold - such good ambassadors for the United Kingdom with their gleaming white smiles, perfect posture and impeccably tailored clothes. But, like a horror film in which the beguiling love interest strips off his mask to reveal an alien monster's face beneath, the young royal's beauty is apparently only skin deep, and more's the pity.
It has come out, despite the Palace's "no comment", that William and Harry have been busy indulging in their usual sadistic pastime: killing animals for the sheer fun of it.
Fresh from blowing birds out of the sky at Sandringham at Christmas, the young Princes spent last weekend on a 'secret' killing spree in Spain. It was not their first visit. At a New Year's getaway in 2005, they and their party apparently slaughtered 740 partridges in a single day as well as numerous other animals, including wild boar and deer at the Finca La Garganta estate.
Click here to read the full article at the Huffington Post
Written by Ingrid E. Newkirk
Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
It's the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In the case of animal abusers, every so often they get done unto them just as they do. Here are this year's best stories in which the Golden Rule put its game face on:
Leg photo © iStockphoto.com/Shelly Perry Shark photo © Getty Images/Digital Vision/Carl Roessler
Looks like animal abusers might want to consider a New Year's resolution to adhere to the Golden Rule … or else.
While heading out to pick up and transport animals belonging to low-income residents for spay-and-neuter surgeries at one of PETA's mobile clinics, a PETA Community Animal Project fieldworker spotted a truck driver attempting to drag something out of a ditch on the side of a busy highway. Our staffer pulled over to make sure that the "something" was not an animal, but to her horror, it was just that—a horribly injured hound dog who was soaking wet, shivering, covered with lacerations, and unable to stand or walk.
The tracking collar around the dog's neck helped explain how he had wound up wandering along a highway: He had been used for hunting. Hunters rarely treat their dogs any better than the animals they take pleasure in killing. Countless hunting dogs are hit by cars when they cross highways while tracking prey or when they become lost during hunts. Dogs are frequently (and illegally) abandoned at the end of the season or when the dog "won't hunt." Many hounds spend most of their lives chained up or confined to pens in all weather extremes, and they are often trained with shock collars, which can cause burns and cardiac fibrillation and turn dogs into confused, fearful, nervous wrecks.
As for this poor, suffering hound, PETA's fieldworker gently loaded him into her van and quickly rushed him to an animal shelter. The dog was taken to a veterinary clinic right away, where it was determined that he had suffered a broken back and that euthanasia was the most humane option for him.
Hunting hurts not only the animals targeted by this cruel blood sport but also the dogs hunters use as their unwitting pawns. It's time to stop hunting for trouble.
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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