A few days ago we should have celebrated “peace day”. Yet, the international community faces the specter of an unwanted and unjust war.
Tuesday, October 4th, we should celebrate “International Animal Day” and yet, in our modern and “civilized” world, the war against animals is underway and, unfortunately, not only in Romania.
What is left to do? How can we stop cruelty to all living beings when we have lost the „train of humanity”?
We, animal rights activists, are dipping here and there, in an ocean of suffering. We are each trying to do what we can to save lives, or at least ease the fate of these innocent beings that we humans have declared war on.
Why? Because they are unwanted, unloved beings!
For example, the dog: tamed and domesticated, the dog has become man’s best friend. Thrown into the street, it became a stray dog, considered by some to be the number one danger.
His imprisonment was decided then, as if he had chosen to end up on the street!
But it was not enough that those who became stray dogs because of man’s fault were crammed into concentration camps, and it was also decided by law that they could be killed by euthanasia.
Long rows of bodies, dogs shot, cut with axes, pierced with forks, deliberately run over by cars, poisoned …. they have become the image of “creativity” with which people got the right to kill for themselves.
This was the plan to eradicate the so-called stray dogs. And all for the sake of protecting man. But dogs aren’t wild animals, they’re pets!
They were tamed by humans to protect them, to stand by the house, like the other domestic animals: pigs, sheep, goats, etc. Of course dogs can give us nothing but unconditional love and devotion.
Many of those who claim to love dogs, actually refer to “their dog” or the breed dog. But do only „aristocrats” have the right to live? A dog without a pedigree can be just as intelligent and even more obedient, because he doesn’t forget where he left and appreciates that he was offered a place in a family.
After 25 years of saving tens of thousands of dogs, we find ourselves where shelters are full of unwanted and unloved. That’s just because a 2013 law requiring all dogs to be spayed and microchipped doesn’t apply.
Horses brutally beaten or bears chased because they’re hungry are not just an animal welfare issue. It’s about the human ecology of the society we live in, about our concern for other living beings and, in the end, about ourselves as humans.
Saint Francis, to whom this International Animal Day is due, perhaps would remind us that man should have sense and a soul.
Happy better days to all animals.
