Pile of Dead Dogs Found in Ballarat
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Jenny Moxham
Sunday Herald Sun
September 2006

The recent discovery in Ballarat of a pile of dead dogs with ears cut off has, once again, focussed attention on this inherenlty cruel sport.

Up to 20,000 greyhounds are killed in Australia annually, many by extremely cruel methods such as beating, drowning, throat cutting and shooting.

Greyhounds have been found shot and alive in dumps, with their ears hacked off.

They are killed because they fail to make the grade and even those that go on to race will end their careers after two to four years.

Up to 1000 a year are exported to Asia for racing careers in Korea and China and it's not difficult to imagine their likely grisly fate.

These countries are notorious for their dog meat trade in which dogs are electrocuted, strangled, skinned alive or bludgeoned to death in the belief that the rush of adrenaline through the dogs' body as it dies in agony will increase human virility.

Other greyhounds end their days in research laboratories where they are subjected to inhumane experiments.

Because of the cruelty inherent in greyhound racing it has been banned in South Africa and six American states and hopefully Australia will follow suit in the near future.

These docile, gentle and loving dogs deserve better than this.

Also got a fox letter in a Frankston local paper..............

Sean Wilmore is correct in saying that foxes 'don't belong here', (Outwitting the fox, 15/8) but that doesn't justify subjecting them to the agony of poisoning and trapping.

They are only one of a multitude of 'foreign' animals, including dogs and cats, that were brought into this country by the white man ...who, incidentally, doesn't 'belong here' either.

Unfortunately for the fox, once he outlived his 'usefulness' to man, he had to be turned into a villain in order to get rid of him and consequently was given the label 'vermin' and 'pest'.

The campaign to vilify him has been tremendously successful and thus few people are disturbed by the fact that this animal, here through no fault of his own, is the victim of a sustained campaign of cruel poisoning and trapping.

Since 'we' are responsible for these animals being in Australia, we have a moral responsiblity to use humane methods of control, if we wish to reduce their numbers.

The answer is the allocation of more government funding for research into fertility control for, apart from this being the only humane method of reducing numbers, it is the only way that will have any real and lasting effect.

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