Animal abuse takes many forms, from neglect to malicious harm. It is defined as intentionally depriving an animal of basic needs or maiming, torturing, or killing the animal. Common causes include irresponsible and ignorant pet ownership, retaliation, expressing anger, and deriving sadistic pleasure from harming animals. Consequences are severe - abused animals often become aggressive and end up in shelters or being euthanized due to fears that make them difficult to adopt. They may suffer permanent physical and psychological scars. Puppy mills also constitute abuse by neglecting dogs in unsanitary, overcrowded conditions. Overall, animal abuse has tremendous negative effects on animal welfare.
Animal abuse takes many forms, from neglect to malicious harm. It is defined as intentionally depriving an animal of basic needs or maiming, torturing, or killing the animal. Common causes include irresponsible and ignorant pet ownership, retaliation, expressing anger, and deriving sadistic pleasure from harming animals. Consequences are severe - abused animals often become aggressive and end up in shelters or being euthanized due to fears that make them difficult to adopt. They may suffer permanent physical and psychological scars. Puppy mills also constitute abuse by neglecting dogs in unsanitary, overcrowded conditions. Overall, animal abuse has tremendous negative effects on animal welfare.
Animal abuse takes many forms, from neglect to malicious harm. It is defined as intentionally depriving an animal of basic needs or maiming, torturing, or killing the animal. Common causes include irresponsible and ignorant pet ownership, retaliation, expressing anger, and deriving sadistic pleasure from harming animals. Consequences are severe - abused animals often become aggressive and end up in shelters or being euthanized due to fears that make them difficult to adopt. They may suffer permanent physical and psychological scars. Puppy mills also constitute abuse by neglecting dogs in unsanitary, overcrowded conditions. Overall, animal abuse has tremendous negative effects on animal welfare.
Animal abuse takes many forms, from neglect to malicious harm. It is defined as intentionally depriving an animal of basic needs or maiming, torturing, or killing the animal. Common causes include irresponsible and ignorant pet ownership, retaliation, expressing anger, and deriving sadistic pleasure from harming animals. Consequences are severe - abused animals often become aggressive and end up in shelters or being euthanized due to fears that make them difficult to adopt. They may suffer permanent physical and psychological scars. Puppy mills also constitute abuse by neglecting dogs in unsanitary, overcrowded conditions. Overall, animal abuse has tremendous negative effects on animal welfare.
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Definition
Animal abuse is a worldwide silent epidemic that goes largely unnoticed
until it is too late. The definition of animal abuse is the act of intentionally causing the deprivation of shelter, water, food, socialization, medical care or even maiming, torturing, mutilating or killing an animal. Animal cruelty covers a vast range of behaviors that are harmful to animals. Cruelty ranges from neglect to malicious killing of animals In some cases animals are used as test subjects for different chemicals and substances that will eventually be used on humans. This type of treatment of animals is legal although there are many groups trying to stop it and make it illegal. In other cases people have deliberately abused and tortured an animal for the purpose of making the animal fight for gambling and "entertainment". This is highly illegal and there are serious punishments that go along with this type of animal abuse. CAUSES The most common cause of animal neglect is irresponsible owners who do not spay or neuter their pets despite the free clinics and financial help offered by animal-aid non-profits and who often then end up with unwanted baby animals that eventually are neglected, stray or dead from diseases or automobiles. 1. Ignorant pet owner believes that the best way to train an animal is to punish it when it does something wrong. It can also happen in the performing animal business, where a few bad trainers abuse the animal when it fails to perform the required action. The result is that the animal eventually performs the requested action out of fear of being abused. 2. To retaliate against an animal: For example, a dog bites a person and is abused by the victim to get revenge. Be careful no to get this confused with self-defense (actions performed to protect the victim, and not for the sole purpose of harming the animal). 3. To retaliate against another person: A person holding a grudge against another person may torture the other persons pets to gain revenge on them. 4. To satisfy a prejudice against a species or breed: A person who hates cats for whatever reason may attempt to kill them. 5. To express anger through an animal: The fact that domestic animals are usually close by and cannot tell anyone what happens to them sadly means that they can be used as living punching bags.
6. Some people feel that abusing animals is a sign of strength and
toughness. 7. To shock people for amusement: This happens on the internet a lot. These people are some of the sickest kinds. They torture animals just to make other people feel uncomfortable, and they derive a sick pleasure from it. 8. To displace hostility from a person to an animal: If a person is angry, he may try to take it out on his animals to give them a taste of what he feels like. 9. To perform non-specific sadism: These freaks abuse animals because they get a sick sense of pleasure by torturing others. Other common excuses for animal abuse are the belief that the animal has no feelings and cannot feel pain or sadness, that God gave man 10. Complete dominion over animals, meaning that it is okay for an animal to be treated poorly. None of these reasons are right, but they are common excuses. CONSEQUENCES Animals that are abused often become aggressive and end up in shelters because they have exhibited hostile behavior and their owners do not want to be attacked. Death row might be the fate of an abused animal because potential animal owners do not want an aggressive animal as a pet. Most animals are not aggressive by nature and usually bite out of fear not aggression, because of the abuse they have endured (Morris). It is often difficult to teach an abused animal to trust humans again, but not impossible. It would take massive amounts of patience on the humans part to gain an animals trust and reverse the effects of the abuse. In fact, due to the fear an animal obtains from abuse, the effects done to the animal are usually irreversible (Robinson). Many animals gain scars and amputated limbs due to the amount of physical abuse the animals received. There have been cases of dogs that were burned over most of their body from chemicals being poured on them resulting in large amounts of scars all over the victims body (Morris). Another form of abuse that affects animals is puppy mills, where dogs are bred over and over in order to produce a large supply of puppies to sell. The dogs and puppies are usually placed in cages and are neglected. They are not cared for properly and are often kept in unsanitary conditions. When rescued, they usually are malnourished and diseased. In addition, they do not have much contact with people, and as a result, they fear humans and are difficult to train and interact with people and children.
Abuse has a tremendous effect on animals. It causes
animals to either be aggressive or reserved and frightened. Shelters take in massive amounts of abused dogs that will probably end up on death row, because the permanent effects make the potential owners unwilling to adopt the pets. Abused animals are more likely to lash out at any time for any reason, while reserved and frightened animals are not willing to interact. Many dogs can be saved but require ample time and money that the shelters do not have.