Okay it’s about a dog and this site’s about cats but this site is also about animal welfare and human attitudes towards companion animals. This is an example of bad companion animal guardianship which is an understatement.
A Florida woman has been found guilty of animal cruelty after placing duct tape, as you see in the photograph, around her dog’s muzzle to shut him up. That’s bad enough but she then posted the photograph on Facebook where it became one of those pictures which is worth 1000 words, namely, that the person who did it is unsuited to looking after a companion animal. Despite that a judge allowed her to keep the dog but she received, on conviction of animal cruelty, a 60 day jail sentence suspended for 12 months of supervised probation.
Perhaps something which may have saved her is that she left the duct tape on her dog for 15 to 20 seconds, she said. The incident happened in November of 2015 and she did it, she says, as a joke to show her son. Some joke!
Everybody who has seen it did not see the joke and on Facebook alone it has been seen 300,000 times. They were all horrified. One resident in Australia was so shocked by the image that she contacted an American police Department about the picture just to make sure America was aware of it.
The woman’s name is Katie Brown. She also said in defence of her actions:
“Don’t panic everyone it was only for a minute but hasn’t barked since… POINT MADE!!!”
South Daytona police were left overwhelmed by the public’s response. Katie Brown’s behaviour resulted in complaints from 44 US states.
I could not find out if she owns a cat. It is possible that she does but I don’t know.
It is bizarre and incomprehensible to me that a person would post a photograph like this on Facebook incriminating themselves and demonstrating to the world that they are unfit to look after a companion animal. It shows arrogance. It shows ignorance. It shows that people can become disorientated when using Facebook, forgetting that it is the real world.
There are a lot of FB users who jump on this sort of behavior. She’s learned that.
Do you think the judge was too harsh? I don’t by the way. A poll tells us that 58% disagree with the sentence and 42% agree with it. We don’t know if by disagreeing they wanted a longer or shorter sentence. I suspect they think it is too long.
Source: Woman sparks outrage by taping ‘noisy’ dog’s mouth shut – but keeps pet
