Otters holding hands

Man Faces Animal Cruelty Charge for Abandoning Dog on Colorado Mountain

We are on the right track. Charges like this should be levelled more often, followed by just punishments.

A man left on the mountains his dog Missy, who was then found moribund by a couple who intend to adopt her although the man would like her back.

Upon their return, the hikers entrusted the dog to a local vet, who told Washburn that it was “the miracle dog of the century, and although she was severely dehydrated she has, miraculously, no long-term or permanent damage.”

... The sheriff’s department also has a rescue team, and other hikers told them about Missy being stranded on Mount Bierstadt during the weekend. However, the rescue team was unable to respond because it is solely reserved for human rescues.

It shouldn't be. That is obviously not right.

What is particularly shocking in this story is that Missy would probably, like so many other dogs, have given her life for her human companion who abandoned her to what he knew was a probable death.

Source: ABC

Say NO to Halal Slaughter in Skegness

There is a new Facebook page: Say NO to Halal slaughter in Skegness. It campaigns against the opening of a Halal slaughterhouse in Skegness, Lincolnshire, England.

It started on 27 July of this year and it alreday has 114 likes (including mine) and 164 talking about this.

You can also sign the relative petition to the East Lindsey District Council. I signed it and encourage you to sign too.

If you're worried about this being an implicit endorsement of other methods of slaughter, you can write in the optional "reason" field what I wrote, or something to that effect:

"All slaughter of animals for food is wrong, distressful and painful for the animals. I oppose all slaughter, halal and non. The halal and kosher methods are more agonizing than the more 'humane', or rather less cruel, alternative."

Also check this website:

Boycot Halal

People are doing something for the animals. It's becoming a rather large, if not mass, movement. If you are for the animals, if you want to help them, what valid reason have you got not to contribute to it?

This anti-halal movement also has the great merit of putting animals on the map. Far from being an endorsement of non-halal slaughter, it makes people reflect on slaughter and what it does to animals.

Furthermore, it gives us an opportunity to explain what's wrong with all forms of slaughter, as in the example of the above petition.

Related posts:

Wake Up, Animal Rights People!

Anti-Halal is Our Battle Too

Intelligence and Bravery of Dogs Shown Yet Again

Explain this by mere instinct, if you can! How did the dog understand that the fire truck was the right place for the rescue of her pups?

Amanda, a heroic, intelligent mother dog, saved her 10-day-old puppies from a house fire in Santa Rosa de Temuco, Chile.

Realizing that her babies were in danger, the German Shepherd mix picked them up in her mouth, carried them one by one away from the burning house, and gently placed them onto the steps of the nearby firefighters' truck.

Mother and babies were then taken to the vet's. Although one of the puppies, Amparo, did not survive her burns, the other four were fine.

The vet, Felipe Lara, said that Amanda had been defensive of her puppies when people tried to take them away from her to look after them. Eventually she let them check over her pups but she remained with injured Amparo and never wanted to let her from her sight.

Anti-Halal is Our Battle Too

The opposition to halal meat in the UK is gathering momentum every passing minute.

A CAMPAIGN group opposing halal slaughter at a Skegness abattoir has gathered almost 100 members in a matter of days.

As I explain in my other blog, it's simply absurd that the animal rights movement does not get involved in the anti-halal campaigns.

All the politically correct or abolitionist objections are ridiculous.

UK Vegetarians

I have just published a new article on UK Vegetarians:

"I launched out in search of a vegetarian restaurant [in London 1887], I would trot ten or twelve miles each day, go into a cheap restaurant and eat my fill of bread, but would never be satisfied. During these wanderings I once hit a vegetarian restaurant in Farringdon Street. The sight of it filled me with the same joy that a child feels on getting a thing after its own heart." [Emphasis added]

This is an extract from a speech delivered by Gandhi at a Social Meeting organised by the London Vegetarian Society on 20 November 1931.

We've come a long way since then. Being a vegetarian especially in London, but also in Britain in general, has now become very common, and life for vegetarians is easy, with restaurants, hotels, products catering exclusively for them or also for them. ...

Interestingly, Gandhi himself became a vegetarian by choice, as opposed to cultural tradition and upbringing, after having read Plea for Vegetarianism, a book by the British author Henry Salt, a true pioneer who also wrote Animals' Rights, one of the first books ever appeared on the subject. Here is the continuation of Gandhi's speech at the London Vegetarian Society meeting, quoted above:

"I saw among them Salt's Plea for Vegetarianism. This I purchased for a shilling and went straight to the dining room. This was my first hearty meal since my arrival in England ...

"From the date of reading this book, I may claim to have become a vegetarian by choice. I blessed the day on which I had taken the vow before my mother. I had all along abstained from meat in the interests of truth and of the vow I had taken, but had wished at the same time that every Indian should be a meat-eater, and had looked forward to being one myself freely and openly some day, and to enlisting others in the cause. The choice was now made in favour of vegetarianism, the spread of which henceforward became my mission."

Read it all.

Why We Should not Follow the Global Warming Scare Just to Make More People Vegetarians

Look at the statistics.

During the 1990s, the number of vegetarians in the UK almost doubled. Many people became vegetarian after various meat scares like BSE and Foot and Mouth, which led large numbers of people to rethink their diets, with 27 % of the population saying that they would consider giving up meat, and 12 % saying that they were vegetarian or meat-reducing.

Now that those scares, exaggerated and distorted by media and governments alike, have disappeared from the horizon, the number of UK vegetarians has decreased from 3 million in 2001 to 1.9 million in 2011.

The global warming theory is not a valid scientific theory. The predictions from computer models based on it have been refuted by the evidence of global temperatures going down when the predictions had said they would go up. And the behaviour of its supporters has contributed to discredit the theory repeatedly, including the latest global warmists scandal: "even the United Nations scientists who still support it formally asked for immunity from criminal prosecution before Rio de Janeiro's international climate talks in June 2012". 

When this hypothesis will be well and truly considered false, as all signs indicate it will, the number of vegetarians will go down again. Not only that: the vegetarian movement will have lost credibility for supporting a theory which, under even a superficial scrutiny, was clearly unfounded and fallacious.

We shouldn't bet on a losing team.

Even more importantly, we should only recommend a vegetarian diet on the strength of arguments that have a solid empirical and logical foundation. In Italy we say "Le bugie hanno le gambe corte" (Lies have short legs). Allegations which are not evidence based don't last in the long term.

Enforce Punishment for Abhorrent Crimes on Animals

This is the photo of Dinos Koukos preparing to burn a kitten's eyes with his cigarette.

The petition to enforce punishment for this Greek man is now closed, after having collected over 3,000 signatures, but there are still many more, similar petitions around, which you can easily find on Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, www.change.org, www.care2.com, www.thepetitionsite.com, www.ipetitions.com, tweetmeme.com and others.

Crimes of this severity committed against animals just because they are vulnerable and defenceless and the perpetrators know that they are likely to get away with it are crimes of cowardice of the worst kind.

Let's make sure that they can't get away with it. Let's make sure that serious punishments for these crimes are enforced, so as to act as powerful deterrents.

Woman Arrested for Bringing Water to Animals in Scorching Heat

Incredible but true.

The people at Care 2 Make a Difference are doing a good job at hightlighting many serious animal issues:

Three years ago, I was driving home and noticed a farm with very thin horses without water. I stopped my car and got out and all the farm animals, goats, chickens, ducks, miniature horses called to me. It was 103 degrees on a sweltering summer day and I could see from the road that all of the water troughs were tipped over and empty. There weren’t even puddles near the troughs so these animals had been without water for a long time and were desperately thirsty. I called 911 and was put through to Animal Control who told me they would check on the farm within the next few days. Desperately thirsty means “Need water now, not in a few days.”

I climbed the fence and gave all of the animals water (photo above depicts the animals months later, after their rescue). I found distress of a level that I had never seen in my life. I couldn’t stop crying as I ran around and watered everyone. There was a bad smell, like dead animals and I found a dead rabbit rotting in his cage. Two skinny kittens ran after me screaming for food.

They Denied Everything

A few days later, Animal Control called me and told me they had checked the farm and everything was all right, my concern was ill founded. I felt like I had stepped into the Twilight Zone!

Some like this one are safe now and healthy but the offender continues to have animals on her property.

I continued to keep a close eye on these animals and found them all again without water two weeks later. I got the same response from Animal Control and proceeded to climb the fence and water them all again. This time I was arrested for trespassing and made headlines in the North County Times and Valley Roadrunner.

It took 9 months, several court appearances, a useless Public Defender, and then an Animal Rights Attorney stepped in and helped me.

Seven miniature horse died of dehydration and starvation and the owner, Mary Johnson, was eventually charged with six counts of Animal Cruelty and I was fined $50 for trespassing.

Would I climb that fence again knowing that a legal battle would ensue? You bet your ass I would! I had a group of solid supporters that the newspaper termed my entourage.

In the end, four animal rights activist attorney’s stepped in and put an end to the nonsense. I wrote a book about my life and my arrest that will soon be published entitled “My Wild Ride.”

Seal Slaughter Starts in Namibia

An alarm bell is rung by the WSPA and Care 2 Make a Difference:

Namibia’s annual seal massacre began this weekend for a culling season that will last from July to November in what is the second largest seal hunt on earth and the largest slaughter of wild animals in Africa.

This year’s goal is to kill 80,000 pups and 6,000 bulls for their coats, fat and genitalia, which will be used in Asia as an aphrodisiac. ...

Yet, a few continue to literally make a killing from this suffering with the small market that remains. One furrier, Australian-based Hatem Yavuz, reportedly controls 60 percent of the market and has a contract to continue killing seals with the Namibian government that extends through 2019.

“Each year up to 85,000 baby seals are killed in Namibia to make just a few dollars from their furs; this report highlights that they would be worth so much more to the Namibian economy alive. Eco-tourism is a growing part of Namibia’s identity but tourists will be shocked to find that a seal they photograph one day may be killed the next morning. There is a clear economic case for the government to protect these animals,” said Claire Bass, WSPA International Oceans Campaign Leader.

Hatem Yavuz may be "Australian-based", but doesn't sound very Australian to me.

Read it all and sign the petition against this atrocity.