Caring about Animals
Gooooood morning GBD! Here’s Nina (aka, Ninz) with a write-up about animal abuse. You may remember Nina from her Passport about Meerbusch, Germany. Anyway, I know many of you are animal lovers, and probably have a lot to say about this topic. Take it away Nina!
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Hey peeps,
First of all, I want to introduce you to the one and only, my dog Amy:
Amy is a former stray dog from Greece who was born in a garbage dump and lived there for over a year. She has our been our new family member for 3 months now. She hasn’t had an easy life before, and in a lot of ways she’s still traumatized. But we try our best to give her a warm-hearted home and all the love she needs to trust humans again. And we make progress every day. For example, she is now trying to get into my bed to cuddle up with me. She would be my favourite bed-guest if she wasn’t so hairy. 
Since I know that GBD is about creating, exploring, and helping, I thought maybe this could be interesting for us to talk about – about how honourable the animal care volunteers are, what a great job they do, AND how cruel we humans can be!
In many countries of the world, animals – not only exotic animals, but also dogs and cats – are treated like garbage, as though they are worth nothing. Lots of them die of hunger or from poison. Therefore, volunteers (like the ones from Animal Care Samos) sacrifice their spare time and a lot of their money to help homeless dogs and cats who are ill and have no chance to survive if no one feels responsible.
If you have the time, watch this video. It shows how they work and what they do. But be prepared – the video is shocking, with pictures of animals who are only skins and bones. It’s very long – about an hour – but you can fast-forward from time to time. (Here is a shorter one – but it’s in Dutch.)
This video here is about animal abuse, and it is also shocking and terrible. They show the bodies of NINE dogs who had been hanged over a period of several months, two of them only a few days before the “tree of horror” was discovered by chance. The identity of their killer(s) is atill unknown. This video made me cry because I can’t understand how people don’t see that dogs are also living creatures with feelings who can experience pain! My mind can’t process why some people do stuff like this?
The Animal Care Samos is just one organization of many, and I look up to all these great guys who help and try to make the world a better place for animals. Especially after getting Amy, my thoughts circle a lot around how can I help? What can I do?
Of course I could fly to the places where my help is needed? But where to begin? And is this the only thing I can do? Or we can do? Don’t you think we can start easily with treating an animal fairly and keeping in mind that animals have feelings, too? Or we can go to a nearby animal shelter to take a dog for a walk? To show them that they’re also worthy to live? Don’t have animals rights too?
JFo
June 10, 2009nina! i applaud you. i LOVE animals and am really glad that you wrote this blog
nice to see all the GbD members coming together and informing each other about whats going on in the world of our precious creatures. sadly, humans can be EXTREMELY cruel to them