Pet Massacres Carried Out in Puerto Rico (8 years)

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By YAISHA VARGAS and ANDREW O. SELSKY

TRUJILLO ALTO, Puerto Rico (AP) - Back roads, gorges and garbage dumps on this tropical island are littered with the decaying carcasses of dogs and cats. An Associated Press investigation reveals why: possibly thousands of unwanted animals have been tossed off bridges, buried alive and otherwise inhumanely disposed of by taxpayer-financed animal control programs.

Witnesses who spoke with the AP said that, despite pledges to deliver adoptable strays to shelters and humanely euthanize the rest, the island's leading private animal control companies generally did neither.

News that live animals had been thrown to their deaths from a bridge reached the public last month when Animal Control Solutions, a government contractor, was accused of inhumanely killing some 80 dogs and cats seized from three housing projects in the town of Barceloneta. A half dozen survived the fall of at least 50 feet.


A ravine off the side of a back road serves as a illegal trash dumping site, in Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico, in an Oct. 18, 2007 photo. A former employee of an animal control firm, Animal Control Solutions, claims that two years earlier the site was used by the company to dispose of stray dogs, some of whom were improperly drugged and left to die. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)


The AP probe, which included visits to two sites where animals were slaughtered, found the inhumane killings were far more extensive than that one incident. The AP saw and was told about a scale and brutality far beyond even what animal welfare activists suspected, stretching over the last eight years.

Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20071114/D8STNQ080.html

[wicket]

1. So sad

:cry: :cry:

[FreeState]

2. How incredibly sad

Im always baffled how this can happen. Do these people not have pets of their own?

[proud patriot]

3. A half dozen survived the fall of at least 50 feet

:cry: just awful

[heliarc]

4. The private sector will solve everything...

This is what everyone keeps telling us. F-ing murderers.

[superconnected]

5. Yes Murderers. It doesn't matter that they are animals.

How do these people sleep?

[mopinko]

6. a friend of mine who has folks there told me that strays are

just rampant there. she will not take her own dogs, who go everywhere else with her, when she visits. this is a sad story, and a lesson in the stupidity of privatization. but there are so many strays that they are looked at like we see rats here. or pigeons. i think she said there is quite a problem with rabies there also, but someone with the numbers might prove me wrong on that.

[superconnected]

8. Time for state sponsored getting all strays and all pets fixed, programs.

That would solve the issue.

I have a friend from Romania that told me the same thing. You'd think the people would be willing to take on a tax for fixing animals. But then, look at it here - 5 million a year are still euthanized in the United states. Down from 20 million in 1985 only because 85% of all cats and 60% of all dogs are fixed now in the USA.

[ironrooster]

7. seems like a bullet to the head would be cheaper

and kinder...

[Genevieve]

9. Pet massacres carried out in Puerto Rico

Source: Associated Press


A former Animal Control Solutions employee told the AP that he witnessed another worker in 2005 dragging 12 to 15 small dogs out of a van along a road outside San Juan. Normally, workers injected animals with a euthanasia drug but on this day there was none. The animals were instead given an overdose of a sedative and flung 50 feet into a trash-filled gully. Some of the dogs were alive as they crashed on top of junked beds, bottles and other garbage.

"I could hear some of the dogs whimpering as they hit the tree branches and then the ground," the former employee said as he stood with AP journalists in the muck at the site, which still holds the stench of death.


Not all the dogs died, however. A dog that was not a stray, but a sickly pet whose owner wanted it euthanized, managed to limp home. The angry owner telephoned the company and demanded it retrieve the dog and do the job right, the former employee recalled.

One dog, stuffed in a sack, was found recently at the Cayey site among other bagged carcasses. It apparently survived the fall and managed to poke its head out of the bag before dying, said Carmen Cintron, who runs an animal shelter.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071115/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/puerto_rico_pet_massacres

---

This is the worst case of animal cruelty I have ever heard of.

[liberalmuse]

10. I can't even read the whole thing, but unfuckingbelieveable.

A benevolent President would give them an ultimatum. Unfortunately, we have a President who thought it was funny to torture and kill animals.

[Genevieve]

11. Yes, he tortured frogs, I think? nt

[Arugula Latte]

28. I'd bet good money he tortured more than frogs.

He is one sick sociopath, and he gets off on hurting others.

[and-justice-for-all]

12. Deplorable and fucking disgusting!

Sick sad world. No wonder we can treat each other right, we can not even treat animals with compassion and respect.

Oh, and fuck Puerto Rico!

[SyntaxError]

16. oops

...

[EFerrari]

13. What the fuck is the matter with people.

I can't even really read this.

[blackspade]

17. I second that!

This disgusts me beyond words.

[csorman]

14. As a non-religious person, this means a lot:

There is a special place in HELL for these people. How f**king barbaric. I can't even read the story.

[SyntaxError]

15. This makes me angry....

How the hell could they do that? The image of that dog limping home makes me sad... :(

[kimmylavin]

18. Oh my God...

With the amount of love, time and money I give to my furry little charges, this just...
I'm sick, really sick.

[shenmue]

19. Nasty.

:(

[Duppers]

20. people in most other countries don't value animals and pets as we do

The UK and India are exceptions.

[eShirl]

21. yeah, but this is Puerto Rico, still part of the U.S.

[Duppers]

22. you're right, but only

technically so.

[Crayson]

23. Ever heard of Maslow's Hierarchy ?

Maybe under US sovereignty ...
But definitely not part of the US CULTURE.

Countries with lower incomes tend to have other problems than caring for the environment or animals or what Paris Hilton is wearing.
They usually have much more palpable problems like earning enough to feed the family and such "lowly" problems.

People in developed countries tend to forget that.

Take a look at the Maslow Hierarchy.
It explains this situation very good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow

[Duppers]

24. I understand the principle well

Majored in psych.

Still don't like it. Btw, it actually costs less to be vegetarian, so I think it TENDS to be more of a cultural thing than need.

[Mend]

25. I think you are wrong....there are plenty of examples of poor cultures, the

American Indians, Native Americans, Africans, for example, who value and treat their animals very well. No, they don't raise standard poodles to show at Westminster, but cruelty is in a class by itself and I believe unattached to a society's economics. Remember Michael Vick...it wasn't that long ago.

[Duppers]

27. we're on the same page

I posted below about Vick before I read your post.

Good points, Mend.

[Duppers]

26. And....

And, btw, I included India, did I not? One would be hard pressed to find poorer places than some locations in India where they respect animals. It IS Cultural.

And 2 words: Michael Vick.

Dr. Maslow will have to take a backseat to sociology here.