Michael Vick Article

[lvoss]

This was posted on a list I am on with permission to crosspost. It was hard to read the article, and the author's defense of Michael Vick's action because "they were only dogs". Addresses where responses can be sent are included before the article. I think that the worst thing about this article is that the newspaper published it.
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PLEASE CROSSPOST

From:
The Spectrum, Student Periodical; Univ of Buffalo, NY, USA.
The Spectrum; 132 Student Union; Amherst, NY 14260
PH: 716-645-2468 FAX : 716-645- 2766
The Spectrum newsroom
All submissions (letters to the editor or guest essay)
may be submitted to the editor in chief.
Stephanie Sciandra, Editor in chief
Managing Editors

Chris Ryndak, senior; Dan Mecca; Matthew Zajac

[sharronhurlbut]

Awful, just awful..
This writer should be ashamed!

[hdolbow]

this makes me sick. those dogs were tortured and then killed.. he should of got longer than that anyway..IMO

How can he compare this to deer either.. the overpopulation of deer can hurt people. my boyfriends uncle was on his motorcycle the other day and a deer ran into HIM.. not the other way around. The overpopulation of deer causes more damage to people than dogs do. They are not similar in anyway and the writer is an idiot for even trying to compare them. And REAL hunters don't try to make the deer "FEEL it".. (sorry my father is an avid hunter and has taught me a lot about the subject)

this guy is so dumb to me. it amazes me that an editor would even allow this in the paper or let the idiot who wrote it even be associated with the paper.

[Janneke]

I do think you can compare the deer with the dog.. In my eyes it wrong if an animal is in pain when it is being killed. So fighting your dog, drowning it etc. is wrong.. as well as shooting a deer more than once before it is dead. If you are a good hunter, the animal is dead after the first shot. Otherwhise you should try to find a new hobby..

And yes.. an animal is the 'property of his owner', but that also makes the owner responsible for the well being of his 'property'.
It's ridiculous to think that because animals can't tell they are feeling pain, you can do anything with them.

It's a pity for Vick that he's not living in the Netherlands though.. because here you won't get punished this hard for killing a dog.. Maybe a fine or something like that…:mad:

[snorky998]

Thank you for posting this. I'm sending a link to my daughter at college and I'm sure she'll not only respond to The Spectrum but circulate the article to other colleges and universities.

I'm hitting the Spectrum Feedback link (at the bottom of the article)as soon as I'm finished here.:mad: Here's a quick link if anyone else cares to respond:

http://spectrum.buffalo.edu/article.php?id=37410

[Andrew]

I will definitely be responding to the article with this response… From a personal and biased standpoint, I am an animal lover & think anybody who can do anything at all harmful to a helpless animal deserves the same treatment...
From a purely factual standpoint: It is proven that animal torture very very frequently leads to other criminal behavior later in life. Children who throw cats into a yard full of dogs often end up in jail multiple times later in life from infractions ranging from petty theft to murder. Hurting animals often leads to hurting fellow humans.... that, to me, is a DIRECT harmful effect on humans, and to me, this isn't a harmless matter of an owner doing what he wants with his property without it bothering others.
Furthermore, dogs that are raised and bullied and tortured into fighting become aggressive. Unfortunately, they are aggressive to everything, which could include a small neighborhood child it kills when it escapes its "home", or an elderly man, or anybody for that matter who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is another DIRECT harmful effect.
Obviously, preaching to the choir here, but maybe this arguement will help the writer realize what an idiot s/he is.

[sharronhurlbut]

I just don't understand the type of thinking the article writer published.
You would want to believe we are way past that…"just a dog".
Sigh
Guess some folks are not.

[lvoss]

I find it disturbing that the author has such little value for life and would write an article defending abuse. No living thing should be beaten and tortured and a person who values life so little that they would do so does represent a possible harm to humans. A person who is willing to justify such behavior because "it was only property" is also scary. His comparison to deer hunting is highly flawed since it is not the hunter's intent to cause pain and torture, they strive for a clean kill and the purpose is to increase the health of the population by decreasing numbers to what the land can support since there are no longer enough natural predators to do the job. People who torture and abuse wildlife are just as wrong as those who do it to domesticated animals.

The absolute worst thing about this article though is that the editor of the paper thought that it was an appropriate "sports" article. That is the section of the paper that it was published in.