Appalled by animal deaths

To the editor:

As I read through the varied articles about the murder of eight animals in Houston, I tried to determine exactly what one should call the facility in which they lived their last few months — and where they took their last breaths. Some articles called it the “Animal Care and Regulation Shelter,” while others provided the name of “Houston Animal Protection and Safety Shelter.”

Really? Certainly no sane person would confuse the treatment given to these animal as “protection,” “safety,” “care” or “shelter.”

I try not to think about the confusion, fear and panic that these animals felt as a human being grabbed and restrained them, put a gun to their heads and shot them. Anyone thinking that this is a humane way to die ought to give it a try.

Current research has proven animals are sentient beings who feel joy, fear, pain and love. And yet, there are still people who refuse to accept this fact. I am sure that it makes it easier for these same people to leave their animals tied up outside in the bitter cold, allow them to breed and produce puppies on a yearly basis, to dump them at the pound when they are no longer cute puppies and to put a gun to their heads when the effort to find another solution is too challenging.

The officer who killed these animals said that he was just doing what he was told, doing his job. That is a familiar excuse, we have all heard it before. During the Holocaust when millions of Jewish people were exterminated, we heard the Nazis and German people say they were just doing as they were told. Too few individuals refused to do “what they were told” to take a moral stand.

It is unforgivable that this was the end for eight animals who once may have felt that they were part of a family, that may have felt loved. Hopefully, Houston will see this as a wake-up call and will either revamp its policies or get out of the animal “protection’ business.

Hopefully, people will spay and neuter their pets to diminish the number of unwanted animals. Hopefully, our attitude about the value of animals will change. Actually, hope has very little to do with any of this. It will take action, commitment, morality and all of us to make this change.

Angie Lewis

Palmer