A bull had to be put down after breaking its leg during an event at the PGX over the weekend.
A Fort St. John woman is facing charges for burning two dogs, one of them allegedly thrown into a campfire while still in its kennel.
The local event was clearly a freak accident during a bullriding event, where normally it's the riders who are sometimes hurt and on rare occasions even killed in the ring.
The latter investigation, currently before the courts, may involve intention to harm or kill the dogs, with alcohol as a possible factor.
The common links in these stories are the animals and the overwrought outpouring of emotion from concerned animal lovers.
Strangely, there seems to be less concern for stories when human beings die in similar settings. There is some fuss when children die in particularly cruel and unusual circumstances but only if it is relatively close to home. The bloodshed continues in Syria for both adult and children civilians caught in that country's civil war but the common reaction seems to be "well, that's over there and aren't those people always fighting anyway?"
But even if that weren't the case, the reactions to the death of one bull and two dogs are over the top and divorced from the reality of most animals, never mind other people.
On farms around the world, bulls and cows die every day, maybe not for our entertainment, but for use as food, clothing, furniture and other goods.
Most dogs are not subjected to a horrific death by fire but family pets are often killed in house fires and they are often the first to die in a car accident, since few pet owners take the time and expense to restrain their animals when going for a ride. That's not including the abuse and neglect experienced by many pets and domestic animals.
The bull incident sparks interest and outcry because it happened so close, right in the middle of the city, and it happened in public, not some quiet farm in a rural area of the regional district.
The dogs, meanwhile, are alleged to have been burned at a campsite in Grande Prairie.
Too horrible.
Too close.
Dogs and bulls and all animals deserve to be treated humanely but, at the end of the day, they are still animals.
Legally, they do not enjoy the rights of other human beings, nor should they.
Morally, no animal should enjoy anything close to the rights of a human being, regardless of their intelligence. They should be protected from needless suffering at the hands of people, no question, but the inhumane injury and/or death of an animal at the hands of a human, whether by accident or on purpose, does not warrant a punishment anywhere near what the punishment would be if the victim had been human.
The concern over animal welfare, however, runs even deeper than just unwarranted suffering.
It's an aversion with death itself, particularly painful death.
As a society, we have never been more sheltered from death. As a result, the death of an animal in a public setting like a rodeo is elevated in importance. Death, even for humans, should happen out of sight and as quietly and painlessly as possible. Our exit from life stands in sharp contrast to our entry, which is noisy, painful and celebrated.
The discomfort with public death caused the mortally wounded bull to suffer needlessly for far too long. Proper respect for the animal would have involved a quick diagnosis of the wound, a consensus from the experts on site that the injury was fatal and a rapid euthanasia of the bull right there and then. Horses with broken legs on a public race track receive that courtesy, so there's no reason a rodeo bull shouldn't receive the same. If the PGX doesn't have protocols in place for the rapid and humane disposal of mortally wounded animals during the fair, it needs to put those in place before next year's fair.
They're just animals and we shouldn't get so excited when they are hurt and die but if we have to put them down, let's not be squeamish about it and do it quickly and respectfully.
