Animal Rights

There is a difference between recognising the rights of animals and upholding them. The case of a puppy Jack Russell which was murdered by nineteen year old Jeffrey Hurring, after first being no less than tortured is a fine example of this. Hurring has finally been sentenced to a year in jail after his truly hideous actions.

The NZ Herald reports:

"Hurring admitted killing the dog, named Diesel and owned by a friend, by first trying to strangle it using a chain, his hands and his feet.When the dog did not die after 30 minutes, he poured petrol down its throat, stuffed a pillow-case down its throat and finally hit it on the head with a spade.The impact broke the dog's back and jaw, killing it."

The Otago Daily Times says that a former owner 'says she is relieved some justice has been done for a dog that was "a sweetie".'

If one should be 'relieved' that a man has been prosecuted for torturing and murdering a creature that got to experience no more than 18 months on this earth, then perhaps there is something very wrong with our mentality towards animal rights within the law of this country.

Should that have been an eighteen month old human baby that had been strangled for 30 minutes before being forced to chug petrol and having it's head smashed in, the public would be crying 'life'. The maliciousness of the both the person and their actions does not lessen because the victim was not human. A person should not have to be 'relieved' that a criminal was convicted, just because the victim was a dog.

Diesel the Dog

Especially since the case of Diesel a sadly common story. In late 2008 there were two seperate, by spookingly similar cases of dog owners dragging their pets for dozens of metres behind their car. In December a Labrador-Pitbull cross was tethered to a car and dragged for several hundred metres in Napier:

"One hind leg of the suffering animal had been ground down to the bone ... The dog had lost skin from all over its body. The pads of two of its paws had been ripped completely off and large patches of skin on its stomach had been torn away. It had also lost several claws."

During it's treatment, the Pitbull cross - stereotyped as the most vicious breed of dogs - proved to have a wonderful nature, without snarling once during the painful recovery process.

The poor Napier Pitbull Cross

And there have been more, similar cases; one involving a goat, and another a cat (attached to the vehicle by hooks through it's rear legs).

Should we be 'relieved' at Hurring's conviction or should it have been a certainty? I personally hope our perspective of animal rights is not in such poor shape that we believe our courts to see a dog as a mere dog, instead of an objective 'accused and victim' case. I believe the court did well in Hurrings case. One year in jail is a fitting punishment, but considering the horrible nature of the crime it could easily have been much, much more should the victim have been human.

Either way, I believe animal abuse is an understated issue in New Zealand. It is something to keep an eye on.