I‘ve been wrestling with the best way to apply my advocacy for animals the last few years. I still don’t have it figured out but the same thoughts keep coming to mind. How can I change the way the world views animals? The way the world views them is why they are treated as they are.
I just watched a video of a man putting tape around a dog’s front and back legs and his mouth. Flopping him around like he was nothing. The whole time this dog was moving around his big dark brown eyes with such fear. This man proceeded to move the dog around like a piece of luggage without any concern for this living being. He proceeded to fling him on the back of his motor bike and sped off. While driving the dog falls of the motorbike onto the road. The guy picks him up like a piece of garbage and flops him back on the bike, this time without even fastening him down. He takes off with one hand on the dog trying to hold him on. You see he was on his way to a “client” to sell this dog for meat. The reality is much worse treatment happens to cows, chickens, pigs, and other animals every day. All for humans, for “normal” society, for food on the table. And while this is happening the animal, the living being, is experiencing extreme fear, panic, and pain.
I am sad (and truth be told angry) that I live in a world where other living beings are seen as less and as something we can do whatever we want with. As long as no one talks about it, as long as we keep hiding our heads in the sand, as long as we cover our eyes & ears and chant “la la la la la” we’ll just keep on trucking.
Not me, not us who can’t keep on trucking. Who in good conscious can’t turn their back on these animals. I don’t know what the answer is and I am unsure of my next chapter of animal advocacy. I’ll just keep praying for clarity on this.
Some people worry about how this affects my own well-being, but the truth is I would be worse off if I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t live with myself. Much of my therapy is in writing posts such as this. It’s a way to let some of the anger, frustration, and sadness out.
I would like to end by letting you know the dog I spoke of in this post was saved by a kind man who saw what the guy was doing to him. The kind man followed him, chased him, stopped him over & over trying to talk the guy into giving up the dog. He finally did! The kind man immediately took all the tape off of the dog and gave him lots of well-deserved pets, hugs, and kisses.
*TREAT OTHERS AS YOU WANT TO BE TREATED, EVEN IF THEY’RE A DIFFERENT SPECIES.*