Bringing a pet home is like welcoming a new member of the family. It is a huge responsibility. There is a massive emotional cost and a high financial cost in the care of the animal. When owners find this cost too high, they abandon their pets on the roads or dump them in animal shelters. This barbaric practice rises during the summer when residents want to go on a holiday.
Often, some residents do not take into account that they will want to take holidays or have to travel abroad for work when they plan to get a pet. When the time comes, they do not know what to do with their pet. They cannot take them along because rules or the cost may not allow that. They do not have a friend or relative to leave their pet with and do not want to pay for the cost of boarding.
Since the novelty has worn away, they do the cruellest thing imaginable: Abandon the pet. The pets are left to fend for themselves in this heat. Most do not survive. Some are rescued by animal welfare organisations or a kind soul takes them in. The animals are found in the most miserable state — they are emaciated, weak, often crippled and dehydrated. Nursing them back to health is a long and emotional process. Animal shelters are already burdened because of the increasing abandonments and suffer from a lack of funding.
There have been campaigns to spread awareness on animal cruelty, but they have not yielded results. Laws need to be drafted and made tough to prosecute those found guilty of animal cruelty. There must be enforcement to ensure the guilty are punished. But in the end, people have to look to their conscience — what if the same treatment was meted out to them?
