I choose this because animals have always been near and dear to my heart, all of the animals I have were rescued in some form or another.  I found five kittens with their mother in a hole in the ground in my backyard.  The kittens were all around two weeks old, and not long after my friend found four kittens abandoned near her house around the same age.  So in total I had nine kittens and one cat at my Father's house.  This was a couple years ago, all the kittens grew up to be healthy affectionate cats, although two we gave to friends, a couple were sadly lost and we still have the rest as well as one dog.   At my Mother's house we have two cats; one is an elderly male cat we picked out from a litter our neighborhood.  The other my cousin found in the street as a kitten, nearly starved to death.  So I have always taken in animals in need and my heart aches when I hear about animals that have been abused.  If there is anyone who does not think that animal abuse is a problem or that because it is illegal to abuse animals that it does not happen, they are very sadly mistaken.  Some may even say that abuse is not that bad or that animals are not affected as we are, when we ourselves are in fact animals.  Some openly disagree with this but on there are two kinds of life on this planet, plants and animals, and humans are definitely not plants.  

One example of the affects of animal abuse was the scientific study done on the behaviors of abused canines.  The article was called "Behavioral and Psychological Characteristics of Canine Victims of Abuse" by Franklin D. McMillan, Deborah L. Duffy, Stephen L. Zawistowski and James A. Serpell.  They showed a list of sixty-nine dogs who had been abused and compared their behavior to some average dogs.  The abused dogs showed great fear in common interactions such as being petted or reprimanded while the control dogs showed more fear in an umbrella or being brushed (Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science.)  Another study is mentioned in this and it says that dogs that were suspected to have been abused had behaviors such as "fear of care giver," "dull demeanor," and "depressed."  (Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science.)  It is a fact, just as any, that dogs can be depressed.  Some have said before that only humans can feel emotions and that animals are emotionless.  Those same people are plants and not animals.

In a more specific example of animal cruelty there is Greyhound Racing.  Now, dogs running in a circle chasing a mechanical rabbit, what could be wrong with that?  Aside from the obvious injuries, like broken legs and fractured skulls, there are the owners of the dogs who only want to make fast cash.  These owners only care that the dogs are fast.  One might think that in order to make a dog fast they should give it healthy meals, of course regular visits to the Vet, or at the very least decent living conditions, research by the ASPCA shows that 27 cases of racing dogs had none of these and 16 even tested positive for cocaine.  In addition to that the ASPCA shows that 11,722 dogs had been severely injured and 909 dogs had been killed for either not being fast enough or competitive enough.  The average Greyhound lives to be around thirteen but many of these dogs rarely make it to 18 months before being retired.  This is just one of the many instances of animal cruelty.

Another instance, most likely a more well known one, would be the animal or "Puppy Mills."   The plant people may say that they are only dog breeders; dogs breed on their own anyway.  However, these dogs are bred incessantly and incestuously, again so that the owners may profit.  One eye witness account was written in an article called "Puppy Mills in Iowa," where an average woman is looking for a puppy and comes across what she later realized was a puppy mill.  She described the puppies shown to her as "They were adorable, roly-poly bundles of fur, but that fur was filthy. They reeked of the same urine stench [as the rest of the complex]" (Puppy Mills in Iowa 1).  The author shows that because she is an average woman she can give a more unbiased account of the puppy mills, having not known what they were.

The more I look into it the more I think that this isn't a very arguable topic considering most everyone thinks animal abuse is wrong.  I suppose there are the apathetic types who don't think it's important, I could argue at them.  I might just reconsider a new subject, perhaps animal awareness or conciousness, then I could keep my sources.
