Sunday, August 12, 2007

I see nothing wrong with this

Admittedly, I'm a dog lover and therefore somewhat biased, but I have no problem with an animal cruelty investigator taking a dying, abused dog to the vet after handcuffing the dog's owner to a car:
A pet detective who is temporarily suspended after rescuing a dog from a locked and overheated car says he was just doing what his mandate asks him to do – save animals' lives.
[. . . ]
On July 31, Smith responded to a call that Cyrus, a 50-kg Rottweiler, was locked in an overheated car. The Toronto Humane Society investigator smashed through the car window, rescued the dying dog, who was slumped and foaming at the mouth, and handcuffed the irate owner to the car. He then rushed the dog to a hospital, leaving the man there handcuffed until police arrived on the scene.
Sounds good to me. So does this:
[R]eports soon followed that the handcuffed dog owner was beaten by the crowd and was bleeding when police arrived.
And? I have absolutely no sympathy for someone who mistreats a dog in such a manner. Sounds to me like the dog's owner got exactly what he deserved. However, I do feel that Mr. Smith might have overstepped his bounds a bit. Could he have handled it in a fashion that wouldn't have subjected the owner to vigilante justice? Probably. I don't know what the specific animal cruelty laws in Canada entail, so perhaps Smith could have taken the dog owner's information, passed that information onto the police, and let the police handle it from there. Still though, I'm not that bothered by some dog owner being beaten for abusing his dog. Here's hoping the owner will be charged and prosecuted, and that Mr. Smith's job is reinstated.

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