Responding to animal cruelty

Responding to animal cruelty

There are disturbing signs of an epidemic of animal abuse in the Mahoning Valley.

It’s an ugly list: puppies hog-tied in a lethal fashion, dogs thrown from a highway overpass, one dog stabbed, two dogs shot, another dog tied to a tree and abandoned.

The cruelty that is involved in these incidents is not only heart-rending, it is frightening. Any psychologist or psychiatrist will tell you — as Dr. Deirdre Petrich told Vindicator readers recently — that animal cruelty is an indicator of antisocial behavior. And people who practice cruelty to animals can too easily graduate to inflicting pain on human beings.

There have always been cruel people. We could actually be seeing an epidemic, or this could be an instance of heightened awareness and a vigilant media shining a spotlight on the ugliness of which some people are capable.

Ways to respond

Whatever the explanation, everyone can help by being more conscious of acts of animal cruelty and by intervening when possible.

And our legislators in Columbus could help if they stopped dragging their feet on “Nitro’s Law,” a bill that would elevate horrible acts of animal cruelty from traffic-ticket status to a felony.

People who abuse and kill animals are a danger to those around them. Nitro’s law will not only punish them at an appropriate level for horrendous crimes against animals, but it will get them of the streets.

We suffer no illusions about whether they will get an appropriate level of treatment while they’re behind bars, but we can always hope so.