The figures voiced by the media, which indicate the number of daily bitten by stray animals, are simply terrifying. It is especially frightening when young children suffer from feral “our smaller brothers”. The injuries they receive are not only physical, but also moral. Although physical suffering is so great that just the heart breaks, looking at the mutilated faces of children and damaged limbs. One thing is clear: delaying the adoption of a decision that could change the current situation is no longer possible.
However, today everything that the administration of individual cities is trying to do in this direction is not effective. For example, in the city of Samara in 2008, it was decided to sterilize puppies older than 6 months and females with a flexible character. But stray animals, despite the decree, continue to breed actively, and victims also end up in the hospital with bites and injuries received from the attack by a pack of stray dogs.
And as if to protect people from this, entire detachments of fighters began to appear, the main activity of which is cruelty to animals with the goal of their complete destruction. “He killed a stray dog - saved a defenseless baby from her!” - here and there, announcements appear on houses and on buses - calls.
Immediately, as usual, there was another alternative party of people who condemn such cruelty to animals. Of course, this provoked the outbreak of war between dogs, people destroying them, and people fighting for rights and, sometimes, for the lives of wounded and injured animals.
So who is right in this war? Such questions are often exaggerated both on the pages of the media and television screens, and on the Internet. The most varied proposals have been made to change the situation, most of them extremely cruel. But through the blunt straightforwardness of the speakers, aimed at methods of dealing with stray animals, a negative attitude is also revealed to the culprits of this “epidemic of wild dogs”, which is gaining strength every day.
It seems that it is time to name the main reason for the dog outrage. How did the first street animal appear on the street? What contributed to the fact that the dog decided to attack the person? The answer is unequivocal: the reason for everything was the cruel treatment of animals of people themselves. Yes - yes, the main reason is precisely human heartlessness and cruelty, aimed at a wordless and practically disenfranchised living creature. And they are expressed, firstly, in depriving him of his usual way of life, and secondly - in relation to animals already thrown out into the street.
Most people, by nature, have a natural sense of compassion and pity for any living being, and have been brought up from birth. These representatives of the homo sapiens species do not offend our smaller brothers, feed them, build temporary dwellings for them from improvised material, and nursing sick and weak cubs. It is simply impossible to answer unequivocally the rhetorical question of whether this is correct.
But there is a very specific answer to the question of whether it is possible to kill, disfigure, poison and specially crush dogs and cats, pigeons and sparrows with impunity. Not! No one gave a rational creature the right to annihilation, much less the right to cruel treatment of animals. The problem of increasing the number of feral dogs and cats that have flooded our cities should be addressed in a more civilized and humane way.
At the present stage, our legislation has article 245, which provides for the punishment of criminals who have injured or caused death to an animal. The offender supposedly must be punished by imprisonment for six months or by corrective labor for up to a year and a fine, which equals the amount of one hundred to two hundred minimum wages or his salary for 1-2 months. And although it is impossible to estimate the loss of a beloved friend by the sum of their salary for one month, the love and affection of a person for his four-legged pet are estimated by the Criminal Code as much. And this law is applied only in those rare cases, if a dead or tortured animal belonged to a thoroughbred and had a master at that time. Because an application to the court should be written by a person. And who will stand up for a homeless God's creature, will go to court, give evidence, spend his time, nerves and money, because when you apply, you need to pay the state fee?
Based on the foregoing, the assumption by itself follows: in the law on punishment for cruelty to animals of the Criminal Code, it is necessary to include a clause providing for the most severe sanctions against unfortunate hosts who first tame and then mercilessly throw out a living creature that loves their owners selflessly . And if today it still sometimes happens to us that monsters, who openly demonstrate bullying in relation to living creatures, are attracted to some purely symbolic responsibility, then cases of throwing a dog or cat out into the street remain far beyond the scope of public condemnation. Nevertheless, the protection of animals from cruelty should begin with this: from registering all pet owners, with strict accountability about their condition, and taking into account mortality and birth rates. And if such a proposal today seems naive and ridiculous, because nowadays it is difficult to count even homeless people, then in the future it will certainly take place.
In the meantime, the representatives of the human race at the head cannot solve this problem, the volunteers exert all their strength and even money to change the current situation. They organize special shelters for homeless animals, pick up sick and wounded dogs and cats on the streets, treat them, perform sterilization operations, feed them, and then distribute them to kind people in the transitions . Moreover, these organizations, even after these actions, do not relieve themselves of responsibility for the future of rescued and attached pets. For some time, the new owners have had to answer phone calls from shelter workers regarding their new four-legged ward.
Of course, while volunteer organizations of animal lovers and protectors are a drop in the bucket. But just as a drop of tar can spoil a barrel filled with honey, so hundreds of such droplets of good, I think, gradually exude a block of human indifference and cruelty.