by Rachael Joseph

Created on: August 22, 2009   Last Updated: August 23, 2009

Penalties for animal cruelty should absolutely be more severe. I worked as a veterinary technician for fifteen years and this is one of the reasons I am no longer in the field. More than half of my career as a technician was spent in emergency rooms and some of the things I am going to share may be shocking.

One evening working the overnight shift at an emergency hospital, a Labrador came in with a ruptured spleen. The dog was bleeding out internally and required numerous transfusions and an immediate splenectomy to save its life. What could have ruptured this dog's spleen? As it turned out, this black lab was a little too happy to see his owner when he arrived home from work and without the proper training, was jumping up and down with excitement at seeing his favorite person enter the front door. Rather than pet Fido after a long and frustrating day or simply walk away from the dog who adored him but was being a tad boisterous, the dog's owner delivered a sharp kick to the abdomen that ruptured his spleen. Can you imagine the force of the kick that could rupture a young, healthy animal's internal organs? What's worse is that after the corrective surgery, we had to let the dog go home with the same owner who put him there. Had it been up to me, our state laws would have allowed us to call the police and toss this guy in jail for what he'd done, require him to take anger management courses and re-home the dog with an owner who would never lay a finger on him.

Another shift in a different emergency room, a husky covered with blood from snout to tail arrived. He was non-responsive. His owner had decided the dog needed to lose some weight and tied him to the rear bumper of his car for a little exercise. When the dog could run no more, the owner either didn't notice or didn't care that he was dragging his husky from the rear of his car. When the dog's skin had nearly slipped his body, he brought him to us. There was no surgery or procedure that could fix this poor, tortured animal who had just been through hours of hellish suffering and at least we were able to humanely euthanize him. The owner walked out the door without paying the bill. He probably wanted to save his money for a new dog, this is a regular pattern.

The worst cruelty and neglect case I'd ever seen came only weeks later when a neighbor brought in a dog she thought was dead. When she went into the neighbor's yard to check on the matted, emaciated cocker spaniel, it took a breath. She brought it

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