We Better Burn All Copies Of ‘Old Yeller’ Too…

The death of a brown-and-white, mixed breed named Bruno on the northern fringe of New Hampshire’s White Mountains has sparked an angry response from animal rights activists …

Oh..? Why? A cruelty case?

…. who want to ban owners from using a gun to “put down” old, sick or dangerous dogs.

Wha..?

“It was done in such a cruel manner. The dog was shot multiple times and left to die,” said Katie Treamer, one of the founders of Justice For Bruno, a group lobbying to make it a felony to shoot a pet to death in New Hampshire.

“In this day and age, it’s just not a responsible way to euthanize a pet.”

OK, so, this guy’s a bad shot or didn’t use a sufficiently powerful weapon. Why should that mean that no-one else is capable of doing it correctly?

Why on earth should that mean that a farmer out in the sticks should have to pick up his suffering animal and lug it all the way into the vet office in town when it’s mauled by a bear, or bitten by a snake, or run over by a car, rather than put it out of its misery there and then?

A humanely placed bullet is a generations-old method of dispatching pets in rural parts of the country where a veterinarian’s syringe can be expensive and hours away.

And even those angry at how Bruno died say outlawing the practice isn’t likely because it is so deeply ingrained in the nation’s agrarian traditions, where farmers and ranchers have long put down domestic animals with a gunshot.

Precisely! They are likely to take a dim view of some airhead bleeding heart trying to impose onerous cost and complication on them.

Growing up on a western Massachusetts farm, John Gralenski, now 80, sometimes had to put down sick or injured pets. He never liked it but he adamantly opposes outlawing the practice.

“I think they should have that right,” said Gralenski, who lives in rural Shelburne, on the New Hampshire-Maine line.

“When I was a kid, we always had dogs and if it was my dog and the dog got sick, there wasn’t any money for a vet.”

Once he had to put a dog out of its misery after it got hit by a car and broke its hip.

“I was just a kid and it was my responsibility,” he said.

Sorry, gramps, but you clearly haven’t moved with the times! No-one takes responsibility any more.

That’s so old hat. Why, the very idea…!

Joanne Bourbeau, the Vermont-based northeastern regional director for the Humane Society of the United States, acknowledged that enforcement might be difficult but just having a law on the books could serve as a deterrent.

“We would have a way to follow up,” she said. “With the veterinary forensics we have now, it’s very easy to prove that a crime was committed.”

So it’s about what’s easy to do, not what’s right to do?

Always, always, it’s the low-hanging fruit, isn’t it?

And always, always, collective punishment for one person’s transgression.

And always, always the desire to force everyone else to stop doing something they wouldn’t personally do. Even if that ‘something’ doesn’t affect them in the slightest.

It’s ego run mad, and it’s why I’m very reluctant to describe myself as an ‘animal lover’ these days, in case someone thinks that means I’m unhinged, like this woman.