PETA and other Virginia animal shelters have just submitted to the state the numbers of animals they received, found wonderful homes for, reunited with guardians, had to euthanize, or were able to release back into nature in 2011. Because numbers can’t begin to tell each animal’s story, let me describe one of those animals: Pepper. … Read more »
Feces littered the floor and black mold covered the walls of a house that held 34 cats—many of them hungry, thirsty, and sick. Some animals were hunched over in tiny cages, covered with their own excrement. Even the beds of the humans who lived there had feces on them. Dogs and chickens were found outdoors … Read more »
Sparks flew recently after Congress restored funding for U.S. inspectors to oversee horse slaughter, opening the door for horses to be killed and butchered in the United States for the first time since 2006. But there is hope for a better bill: The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011 (S. 1176/H.R. 2966), which would … Read more »
The new year is already looking a bit brighter for animals: A PETCO store in Dickson City, Pennsylvania, has announced that it will close permanently on January 1—which is great news for the hamsters, gerbils, mice, fish, and other small animals who suffer and die every day in PETCO’s stores and suppliers’ facilities. “Life” for … Read more »
According to a whistleblower, two bearded dragons languished in the back room of a Chicago-area PetSmart store for six months, apparently suffering from improperly treated eye infections that spread to their jaws and caused their faces to rot away. After pressure from PETA, the store’s manager finally took the bearded dragons to a veterinarian who … Read more »
glenn_e_wilson | cc by 2.0 Ah, New Year’s Eve. Staying up late, sipping bubbly, singing “Auld Lang Syne,” and … scaring the daylights out of an opossum? Unfortunately, yes, that last one happens every year at the New Year’s Eve “Opossum Drop” in Brasstown, North Carolina. During the cruel event, a live opossum is suspended … Read more »
As cubs, sibling brown bears Marko and Maria were captured in the Albanian mountains after their mother was killed by hunters. For two long years, they languished in tiny cages outside a restaurant in Tirana, Albania, barely surviving on scraps of bread. A compassionate woman who was determined to rescue the bears from this miserable … Read more »
Authorities recently rescued 108 animals from three homes in Duncanville, Texas, where dogs and cats were found stacked in filthy, hair-encrusted, rusty cages and confined to rooms in which urine and feces coated the floors—allegedly up to a foot deep. According to news reports, the door to one room to which dogs were confined was … Read more »
My dog, Pete, attracts lots of attention on our walks—he jumps for joy like his legs are made of pogo sticks, seeming to defy gravity as he launches his sizable frame skyward. Along with “Did you teach him to do that?!” (to which I answer, “Nope!”), people are always asking me, “Where did you get … Read more »
Many of us have had a peek into the bizarre world of hoarding courtesy of reality television. Accumulating piles and piles of household junk is bad enough, but when hoarders collect living animals, the results are extreme neglect, suffering, and death. According to the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), “It is likely that up to … Read more »
Pamela Anderson is appearing on the Israeli version of Dancing With the Stars this season, and she never misses a step when it comes to speaking up for animals. This week, Pamela sent an impassioned letter to Israeli Minister of Religious Services Yakov Margi urging him to support a bill that would ban (!) the fur … Read more »
Picture this: It’s 1773 and the young poet Anna Barbauld is working as an assistant in the laboratory of vivisector Joseph Priestley. In order to study breathing, Priestley tormented live mice, and he did it without giving them any anesthetic (as vivisectors today still do in many cases). Aaron Logan / CC by 1.0 One … Read more »
