“The Animal-Cruelty Syndrome” by Charles Siebert

July 14, 2010

On a late May afternoon last year in southwest Baltimore, a 2-year-old female pit bull terrier was doused in gasoline and set alight. A young city policewoman on her regular patrol of the neighborhood of boarded-up row houses and redbrick housing developments turned her squad car onto the 1600 block of Presbury Street and saw a cloud of black smoke rising from the burning dog. She hopped out, ran past idle onlookers and managed to put out the flames with her sweater. The dog, subsequently named Phoenix, survived for four days with burns over 95 percent of her body, but soon began to succumb to kidney failure and had to be euthanized.

For the complete article, go here.

This is a long article in The New York Times Magazine by Charles Siebert and deals with the issue of animal cruelty, focusing on dogs. Reading parts of this almost made me sick to my stomach; it is not for the squeamish but I consider it Must-Reading for anyone who cares about this issue. I hope that Siebert will put this material in book format so that it can stand alone as testimony to the horrible things humans are capable of and the efforts of those who seek to stop the abuse.

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