animal abuse

By Lisa Wathne

An Indiana boy and his dog were injured recently by the family’s pet monkey—who had been locked in a cage for years because of “aggression”—after he escaped and ran amok. You’d think that after a Connecticut woman’s face was ripped off by her friend’s pet chimpanzee last year—or after a toddler was strangled to death by her family’s python, or a Texas teenager was mauled to death by her stepfather’s tiger—that lawmakers would step in to put an end to the carnage.

But there’s still no federal law prohibiting people from breeding, selling or acquiring exotic and dangerous animals to keep as pets. Why?

The journey for many of these animals begins in places such as Asia and Africa and in the jungles of Central and South America. Many are imported legally in the billion-dollar-a-year exotic-animal industry. Others are jammed into trunks or suitcases or not infrequently, strapped or taped to the smuggler’s body. Such was the case with a Mexican man who was recently caught with 18 dead and dying monkeys stuffed into a girdle. Click to continue »

By Jennifer O’Connor

The state and county fair season is in full swing, and the times they are a-changin’. Segway rides are replacing tired old pony rides, hands-on clean power demonstrations have taken over petting zoos and people are waiting to ride a vegetable oil–powered car instead of an elephant. Cruel animal displays are making way for fresh and innovative exhibits that appeal to a generation that cares about animals and our planet.

Mobile solar panels, hybrid water heating systems and wind-powered generators are drawing tens of thousands of fair visitors who leave entertained, informed and empowered. This year’s Green Long Beach Festival showcased an art project with 23,000 water bottles representing the wild dolphins who are killed for food in Japan each year. The Spring Green Expo in downtown Los Angeles featured student-designed sustainability projects and panels on organic gardening. Similar “green” fairs are sprouting up all over the country.

Yet some fair organizers—refusing to accept that times and sensibilities have evolved—continue to fall back on stale old midway displays such as tiger cub photo booths, pig races and goldfish ping-pong games. And for these ill, exhausted and dispirited animals, the shift to the 21st century can’t come quickly enough. Click to continue »

(Southwick’s Zoo urged to publicly release Dondi the elephant’s veterinary records)

editor’s note: For years Southwick’s has been nothing but an exotic animal death camp PRETENDING to care for animals. 15 or 20 years ago, they made the news (they have made the news several times) for their shitty wild animal housing. I went down there and saw: a chimp in a fake circus train car sitting on a bale of hay! That was it! That was its home! Their lion? In a fenced in bit of concrete sitting in the middle of the dump - all ribs, all hip joints. No shade - no “habitat.”

A crime! A crime they had to pay for: they were ordered to build more suitable habitats for the poor animals that “live” tragic lives at the Southwick “zoo.” Do not kid yourself! There are no real vets/experts there. There is no one who is a true biologist/scientest caring for the animals. This place is strictly a money maker - no better than Barnum and Bailey’s.

Let’s work to free Dondi’s “vet” records. I bet they did little for that poor creature!

Boycott Southwick’s in Mendon, Massachusetts!

- Rosalie Tirella

now the article:

San Rafael, Calif. – In Defense of Animals (IDA) today filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), urging an investigation into the death of Dondi, an Asian elephant held at the Southwick’s Zoo in Mendon, Massachusetts. Dondi died on Wednesday, after suffering an unidentified illness.

“Dondi’s unexpected death raises a red flag because at age 36 she should have been in the prime of life,” said Catherine Doyle, IDA Elephant Campaign director. “We are asking the USDA to investigate the circumstances surrounding Dondi’s death as a matter of public interest and public safety.”

In a separate letter sent to Southwick’s Zoo president Justine Brewer, IDA urged the zoo to publicly release Dondi’s veterinary records and necropsy reports, saying, “The public has a right to know the cause of Dondi’s death.”

Dondi was in direct contact with the public at the Southwick’s Zoo, where she gave rides during the summer months; she performed circus tricks and gave rides during the winter at various locations in Florida. Elephants can harbor diseases transmissible to humans, including tuberculosis, which can be difficult to detect. Release of the records would hopefully allay any public health concerns. Click to continue »

By Allie Simone, Acting Director, Worcester Animal Rescue League

The Worcester Animal Rescue League has received considerable feedback from the public in response to Monday’s T&G article regarding the proposed muzzling ordinance. Clients, volunteers, WARL supporters and county residents are deeply concerned about the negative impact such an ordinance will have. Should this ordinance come to pass, we are certain that many dogs will be abandoned and consequently seized in record numbers.

And, where will they go? There is no official, city-financed “dog pound” in Worcester. The only facility in the city capable of accepting lost or abandoned animals is the Worcester Animal Rescue League. The Worcester Animal Rescue League is a private, non-profit, limited intake animal shelter, accepting pets only when space is available; Adoptable pets are not euthanized because of time or space constraints. This is our firm policy, and we have worked hard to make this a positive reality for the homeless animals of Worcester County. The Worcester Animal Rescue League currently has only 96 kennels for dogs and 41 cages for cats, plus a very limited number of foster home caregivers. On average, the WARL receives over 2,600 homeless animals each year. And, in the current economy, adoption rates have dropped while surrender rates have climbed.

We are very concerned that the City Council has not thought through the ramifications of the passing of this ordinance. Animal control officers were not consulted. County shelter administrators were not conferred with. What will happen to the numerous pit bulls, pit bull crosses and others mistakenly identified as pit bulls, all of which the city finds itself newly in possession of?

The Worcester Animal Rescue League values the long standing relationship it has built with the City of Worcester. However, it is not currently held by a contract to accept impounded dogs found in Worcester. If this ordinance passes, the Worcester Animal Rescue League will no longer accept dogs from Worcester. The dedicated staff and supporters have worked too hard and advanced the organization too far in the quality of care given to its animals to suddenly reverse our no-kill, limited intake policies. This ordinance would be asking us to take a giant step backwards, becoming once again a kill shelter. We wish to be very clear: The Worcester Animal Rescue League will have no part in euthanizing dogs or any other animal due to breed discrimination.

We all know that each animal is an individual. The staff and volunteers at the Worcester Animal Rescue League care for thousands of animals each year (including many wonderful pit bulls, which happily find forever homes throughout the county and beyond) and do not believe in discriminating against a specific breed of animal. What’s more, most animal behaviorists agree that humans are the cause of the vast majority of behavior issues.

Alternatively to the City Council’s proposed plan, the Worcester Animal Rescue League believes establishing a mandatory spay/neuter ordinance for pit bulls would be a much more effective program. We are convinced that a muzzling ordinance in Worcester will ultimately fail. Why? Muzzling does not prohibit breeding; what it does do is make a dog look more intimidating, which only satisfies the social/cultural needs of irresponsible owners who use the dogs as a status symbol.

According to the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association), 75% of dog bites are caused by intact (that is, unneutered) male dogs. It is no wonder than that a proactive bite prevention program begins with a stricter enforcement of spay/neuter practices. This is simply common sense.

The Worcester Animal Rescue League has nearly 100 years of experience in such matters, and it welcomes members of our community and the Worcester City Council to tour the shelter, meet the staff and new director, and visit with all the great pets waiting for a home. Additionally, The Worcester Animal Rescue League hopes to work collaboratively with the City of Worcester in developing practical pet ordinances that serve all residents (both two and four-legged) of our community.

By André du Broc

I’ve spent much of my life in careers centered around making others happy. As an actor, I believed that my first responsibility was to the audience. They needed to be engaged by everything that I did on stage. This was particularly true of my time as a circus clown. If an audience’s joy depended on my dropping my pants, I dropped my pants. If it meant taking a pie in the face, so be it.

The veneer of the circus was everything I desired in a career. It was a chance to make masses of people happy, a chance to travel, and an opportunity to take my silliness very seriously. What I found backstage, however, was very different.

Audiences come to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth primarily to see two things—clowns and elephants.

I spent most of my time with the elephants. Click to continue »

By Debbie Leahy

The recent death of an animal groom at a Shrine-sponsored circus in Pennsylvania is a tragic end to an already tragic situation. Elephants have been beaten, battered and broken by the circus industry. Is it any wonder they snap from the stress?

Bullhooks look like a fireplace poker—they are batons with a sharp metal hook on the end. They are the standard tool that circuses use to break and manage elephants. These ugly devices are designed to cause pain and can rip and tear skin and leave bloody wounds.

Longtime elephant trainer Tim Frisco was caught on videotape viciously attacking terrified elephants with bullhooks and electric prods during an elephant training seminar. Frisco instructs other trainers to hurt the elephants until they scream and to sink the bullhook into their flesh and twist it. He also cautions that the beatings must be concealed from the public. The elephant who killed the groom in Pennsylvania is believed to belong to Terry Frisco, Tim Frisco’s brother. Click to continue »

By Dan Paden

If you care about animals, you should never buy one from a pet store. That may seem counterintuitive, but PETA’s undercover investigations have demonstrated time and again that pet shops and the companies that supply them treat animals like disposable objects. No thought is given to the fact that they are living beings.

PETA’s latest case proves this point.

Imagine a worker putting hamsters into a plastic bag and bashing them against a table in a crude attempt to kill them. One hamster languishes—panting heavily and suffering—for several minutes.

Unsalable animals are gassed in a filth-encrusted glass tank. Hamsters are killed when careless employees crush their necks between shipping boxes and box lids. Click to continue »

By Kathy Guillermo

Two years after Eight Belles’ fatal breakdown during the Kentucky Derby, many of us still remember the heartbreak of seeing that beautiful filly lying in the dirt at Churchill Downs, her ankles shattered beyond repair.

The thoroughbred racing industry would have us believe that Eight Belles’ tragic death was a “freak accident,” but it wasn’t. Every single day, three horses, on average, suffer catastrophic injuries while racing and must be euthanized. This is no rare event. It’s business as usual.

At least 2,000 horses have died on U.S. tracks since the Eight Belles tragedy. And every month, 1,000 racehorses who don’t “measure up” are sent to other countries to be slaughtered for human consumption. Click to continue »

PETA is constantly under vicious and vigorous attack by people who have two goals in mind: to do all that they can to stop us from winning animal rights victories and to cripple our ability to expose animal abuse. But we are not about to let them succeed.

Industry giants and their sleazy front groups are going after PETA for one reason: We’re making tremendous progress in our campaign to end cruelty wherever it occurs, from slaughterhouses to laboratories, the exotic-animal trade to the fur trade, and sleazy roadside zoos to miserable circuses. Our opponents are very upset about the effectiveness of our investigations, including the one that we conducted on turkey farms owned by Aviagen Turkeys, Inc., in West Virginia. That investigation led to the first cases in U.S. history in which factory-farm employees faced felony cruelty-to-animals charges for abusing birds. And that scares them! Click to continue »

By Debbie Leahy

SeaWorld’s damage control team is in overdrive following the tragic death of a trainer who was attacked by one of the theme park’s captive orcas. But if SeaWorld held news conferences every time an animal died at its facilities, people would be staying away in droves. SeaWorld, which owns most of the captive orcas and bottlenose dolphins in the U.S., has one of the worst animal care records in the country.

Twenty-one orcas died in U.S. SeaWorld facilities between 1986 and 2008 — an average of nearly one each year for 22 years. Their deaths were caused by a range of factors, including severe trauma, intestinal gangrene, acute hemorrhagic pneumonia, pulmonary abscesses, chronic kidney disease, chronic cardiovascular failure, septicemia and influenza. In some cases, the cause of death could not even be determined, but it is clear that none of these animals died of old age. Dozens of bottlenose dolphins have also died at SeaWorld. Marine mammals are literally dying to entertain you.

Ocean animals inhabit vast, fascinating and complex worlds. Orcas are intelligent predators who work cooperatively in search of food. They share intricate relationships and swim as much as 100 miles every day. At SeaWorld, orcas perform circus-type tricks for food; swim endless circles in small, barren concrete tanks; and live far short of the 60-year maximum life span that orcas enjoy in the wild. Their worlds have been reduced from fathoms to gallons. Click to continue »