Jesus fucking Christ. Bosnia has not been a war zone in a long time, and not everybody (I would doubt the majority) in Bosnia has a weapon. I lived on the Croatian border of Bosnia for four months (in 1996, right after the war) and spent a decent amount of time in the country, and a good portion of the populace does not have weapons. For fuck’s sake, it hasn’t been a war zone for about 15 years now.
Is there any evidence that very young puppies suffer more from being drowned than they do from being put down by a vet? I’m just curious.
I agree with that. I think she may have choose drowning the puppies over using a hatchet or slitting their throats because the there was less risk of getting her clothes stained (a very valid thing to consider in an environment where you don’t have a lot of clothes and probably have to hand wash them).
All mammals fear drowning, Nzinga. Breathing in water hurts. The stuff used by vets stops the heart instantly, and generally, the animal is sedated first. Prior to the “pink stuff” the humane destroyer, or bolt gun, was used.
Pitching them in from a height guarantees that they have painful injuries as they drown. I guess it beats strychnine, but anyone who thinks that drowning a puppy is more humane than snapping their little puppy necks is absolutely insane. Braining them with a hammer is probably more humane. I can’t think of a method that ISN’T more humane that allowing them to fall from a height, thrash to exhaustion, then drown.
Even if drowning them was the most human option, which it absolutely isn’t, the humane way to do that is to gently hold them under until they stop struggling – not pitch them like a baseball. It doesn’t cost any money to take a moment to minimize an animal’s suffering.
Drowning is considered an inhumane method of euthanization for vertebrates. If you absolutely must kill an animal yourself rather than take it to a vet (such as in the case of vermin, an animal that is already injured and is suffering, etc) it’d probably be better to go for a gunshot to the head, a penetrating captive bolt, or cervical dislocation. Drowning takes a long time and is fairly traumatic and so, obviously, isn’t preferable to a method that can cause instant death. If you don’t know what you’re doing you might just injure the animal and leave it alive and in more pain, which is why just going to a vet would be better, but if you have to do it drowning is a pretty cruel choice. Decapitation without stunning the animal first is not considered a humane form of euthanasia either, FWIW.
This PDF does a run down on how to euthanize on your farm if it’s necessary http://www.agrosecurity.uga.edu/annexes/Annex05_Euthanasia.pdf
Whack-a-Mole, I’m not sure what your point is. I don’t approve of what the girl did. I just think the international outrage is a bit extreme when far worse abuses don’t get this sort of coverage. People are still welcome to their outrage, of course.
Well, I am an avid swimmer and have had a few close calls over the years where getting my next breath was in doubt. I can say from experience it is very unpleasant. If you will not take my word for it then consider our government tortures people by waterboarding them which simulates drowning so I think it is a safe bet that drowning sucks in a big way.
On the flip side I have taken pets to the vet to be put down and held them while it happens. Quite peaceful and quick. I also volunteered for the Anti Cruelty Society in Chicago and while I didn’t do it there are volunteers who help with euthanasia when it needs doing. They show you a video of it during orientation and the animals are calm and just kinda sigh and that’s it.
I’d say the difference is dramatic.
Sure. There’s that, and consider, you’re a teenager sent out to do a grisly task, which do you prefer (from your own selfish standpoint)? Slitting the throat of puppies or throwing them into the river? It’s far easier to distance yourself from the situation if you just throw them in the river (or over a cliff, like some US military did in Afghanistan or Iraq [wherever it was] in a video a few years ago) than taking an axe to their heads or putting a bullet in their brains.
Now, granted, were I in the situation, I think the most humane choice, not having access to firearms, would be to whack their heads off with an axe. But, somehow, I don’t feel people objecting to the drowning puppies in this thread would feel any better seeing me decapitate puppies vs. drowning them.
Outrage was sparked, I think, by what apparently looked like a teen laughingly tossing puppies into a river then posting the exploits online.
I realize people have explained away some of it.
Nevertheless I am surprised you are surprised at the outrage. One thing to kill puppies. Another to kill puppies with seeming glee and advertising it.
Even if it was all a huge misunderstanding you have to admit it does not look good.
Hmm. I appreciate the answers, but I don’t know that I am convinced yet.
Have patience with me, lawd, cause I tried to google this up myself and the results are just all over the place.
My real question is do NEW BORN puppies feel pain in the same way humans do. I know intaking water accidentally in a pool caused me distress, but I’m not a newborn puppy.
I get the feeling that maybe these rural folks that I have heard drown puppies either know something I don’t, or are just ignorant about the pain the newborns feel. If they are ignorant to the pain, then that means she isn’t cruel or psycho or whatever.
If they know something I don’t, then maybe that is why they do it.
Whether or not animals experience pain in the same way humans do is still a matter of debate and not one I feel qualified to delve into. They react as though they experience pain and that’s enough for me. IME, us ignorant country folk simply don’t think about the issue deeply. Drowning is a method that’s been used for a long time, it’s easy, it takes no skill. I don’t think those that do it are considering whether or not the animal likes it.
Cervical dislocation is pretty easy, too, especially on an animal as small as those puppies. But ironically, drowning is seen as less violent than breaking an animal’s neck.
I don’t know about the culture in Bosnia, but disposing of animals which won’t live or wont be taken care of in life is common all over the world. Some cultures are stoic about the fates of animals and in more economically secure societies we have the luxury of hoping to nuture all living creatures.
My main concern is the apparent glee with which she carried out her task. I’d say to watch this child for signs of antisocial behavior as she grows.
It’s worth mentioning that for any child who has the gift of empathy killing puppies would be very difficult and that there is a possibility that, as a defense, she created a “fun” scenario to avoid feeling the pain of what she was doing, much in the same way that some people put on an air of toughness and indiference when they are hurting.
Without knowing the nature of the grandmother’s request or the child’s homelife it’s difficult to tell what her cavalier attitude was about.
This is the most sensible summary I’ve seen of the situation so far.
Thank you. I remember some stories from my Virginia cousins about bobbing the tails of puppies and them not feeling a thing. I really don’t think even the most jaded, hungry country folk would just want to torture animals for no reason. Maybe they don’t know that drowning the pups isn’t the best way. I tried hard to see both sides to this issue, but ultimately, I think I just believe the girl isn’t sick. Maybe she could be stronger in character in the future, and dispense of sick puppies in a way that is more humane. Snapping a puppy’s neck would be one of the most difficult things I would ever have to do.
The thing is, I doubt this option is available in a lot of parts of Bosnia. The love for animals that we have here in North America and Western Europe just isn’t common in a lot of the world. I adopted my cat when I lived in Bulgaria and I got teased a lot by my coworkers for my treatment of him - which is not particularly crazy by American standards. People who saw him were always shocked by how clean and healthy he was, because it was so unusual to see a well-treated housecat.
It’s not totally unheard of for people to care about their animals in the Balkans, but they’re kind of unusual. I had two coworkers in Bulgaria who really loved their pets and were terribly frustrated by the general treatment of animals in the country. One of them - she adopted her neighbors’ dog because they beat her - once asked me if there really are animal cops, like on the Animal Planet shows (we got Animal Planet Europe on our shitty village cable network). I told her that yeah, there are. She told me that America must be a really wealthy country, that people would devote so much time and effort to making sure that animals are well-treated.
I’m not really defending this girl. I haven’t even watched the video, because I know it would upset me a lot. But I just don’t see the intentional killing of puppies to mean that this girl is a sociopath in training or whatever. Just, as someone who’s spent a lot of time in the Balkans (I didn’t live in Bosnia, but I’ve been all over the Balkans, including to Bosnia, and there are a lot of shared cultural traits) this doesn’t strike me as particularly shocking behavior.
So if it is a cultural thing then we cannot deem it shocking?
In some cultures killing your sister/daughter is allowed if she embarrassed the family (so called “honor killing”).
I’m shocked by that and no amount of, “But it’s their culture,” will dissuade me from that opinion.
I do not doubt the culture is as you say. I just expect more from people. It is no major leap of philosophy/morality to try and avoid causing needless harm whenever possible even if it is only to a dog. Certainly a level that should easily exist in the Balkans. They are not uneducated, uncultured people barely one step from wild animals that we shouldn’t expect better.
I’m not saying that it’s not shocking, I just don’t think this is an indication that the girl is a budding psycho.
As for the comparison with honor killings, I don’t have a comment. I’ll have to think about that a little bit more.
I don’t think they see drowning puppies as “needless harm.” I think the impression is that it’s a humane death. As has been mentioned countless times in this thread, drowning unwanted animals is not exactly an uncommon way of getting rid of them. Hell, I think chopping off their heads is a better and quicker way to go, but can you really blame people who’d prefer to drown them?
Lots of things have been common throughout the ages. Didn’t make them all good ideas.
I’d like to think as humans we have progressed and casual violence to animals/causing needless suffering is no longer deemed ok (stress on the word “needless” as I grant some is probably unavoidable).
Guess I am wrong about that.
Yes. I do think we have quite a ways to go before we’re at that level.
I think the girl deserves a fine (and I hope her parents make her reimburse them the money this is going to cost them). She did something that certainly wasn’t nice. There are many better ways to dispose of unwanted puppies even in a place that doesn’t have lots of animal shelters etc. It would have been kinder and more courageous to bash the pup’s heads in. Both kids involved were being callous and stupid to film this and put it online. If I ever encountered kids IRL doing this, I would put a quick stop to it and involve authorities.
But I don’t think that she’s a sociopath or necessarily emotionally disturbed or deficient in any way. Or that the incident deserved sensational national news coverage, the rage of millions, and personal harassment and death threats of a girl who is less than 16 years old. I don’t think having fun killing animals, or at least killing animals without bad feelings or guilt over it, is intrinsically wrong or a sign of emotional problems. I don’t think drowning is ‘torture’. I have trouble grasping the moral difference between these puppies being killed and the mouse I killed in my house the other day (by putting it in a paper bag and smacking it against the wall, because I’m too much of a pussy to break it’s neck with my hands - I would probably drown it before I did that). I sure don’t understand why people get more upset about newborn animals being killed than they do adult animals - as a dog-lover who has three in my house right now, I always prefer to adopt adults so I know exactly what I’m getting, and it annoys me the lengths our shelters go through (in terms of money and resources) to save, treat, and adopt out baby animals- while adult animals, many proven to be good pets, are euthanized. Why not put the puppies to sleep? Many of them are sick, full of worms, need to be fully vaccinated and spayed and neutered…