Rescue Journal

is laziness a sin?

Carol  ·  Jan. 10, 2008

i am freezing cold, soaking wet and covered in hay.....the barn animals are not in much better shape. i truly hate this weather. at lunch time there were not too many barn animals in sight so i went looking for them...shelter 1 had 3 horses and a goat, shelter 2 had 2 cows, i pig and a goat and shelter 3 had 3 sheep and a llama (and that was the biggest shelter too!) and tunie had the whole barn to herself...she looked dry and not so miserable.

i got mugsy's little buddy away from him today..he is still in the icky doorless room looking to see if he accidently misplaced him. i do hope he comes back into the house tonight, so far he is still saying "no" and "get away from here, i have a friend over...somewhere."

well, the only things left tonight are laundry, meds and pissing off little miss sunshine...she is a messy eater and has canned food smeared all over the bathroom cupboard...guess who is getting booted out of there for a few minutes while i scrub it down? that ought to get her right back to hating me.

raymond is starting to look so good, which means that whoever had him before wasn't just ignoring an old sick dog that needed medical care, they were simply not feeding him, period. poor boy...imagine being confined by chain or kennel and just left to slowly starve.
once a starved dog, always a starved dog...these dogs need 24 hour a day access to food for the rest of their lives just to feel safe.
the world is full of such utter bastards...most of them aren't intentionally cruel, just freaking lazy....too much work to go buy the food, too much work to pour it in a bowl and carry it out to them.

i think laziness is the world's greatest evil. it causes more trouble and heartache than all the acts of intentional cruelty combined.

Comments

Samantha

I see both lazyness, willfull ignorance, and sometimes real ignorance to the neglected condition of some dogs that come into my shop. You right people do seem to think its perfectly alright. I will never understand how much lack of empathy people have.

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Deb

Sloth is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Along with Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger and Greed. Yikes, I'm hooped!
The Seven Heavenly Virtues (who came up with all this stuff??) are: Faith, Hope, Charity, Fortitude, Justice, Temperence (Temperance?) and Prudence. Uh Oh again.

Of course your post was dead serious, and I'm really not trying to make light of it. How many poor Raymonds die of "begnign neglect", never having known that the world is not in fact full of utter bastards. Cats nuked in microwaves, puppies beaten to death with hammers, short lives ending quickly and horribly or long lives of quiet desperation, death coming slowly, and often as a gift.

Our MacKenzie will never recover from being a beaten, starved, chained yard dog....and she wasn't yet a dog when she was rescued, she was only six months old, a baby still. Her fear is so ingrained that nothing will ever make her feel 100% safe. We try, God knows we have tried everything, but Kenzie is "managed", she has not recovered. There are things my beautiful dog will never be able to do (or do again - live and learn) because it's not safe for her or for another animal. She will live out her life safe and warm and loved, but she could just as easily have died alone on that miserable three foot chain on that God-forsaken concrete pad. Dogs die in situations like that - and worse - every single day. We have no idea how many. For every Raymond, for every MacKenzie, for every Isaac and every Moses, how many are not rescued?

The rain (no snow here yet) and miserable weather makes the plight of yard dogs so much worse. I swear that every dog on our street, except ours, are "outside dogs". The Ridgeback across from us (who has recently aquired a friend), a sweet natured boy named Diesel, is outside day and night, with no visible shelter, 24/7. Two young Labradors, both yellow, both named Maggie, same thing.....outside and alone in the cold rain. At least Maggie #1 has a doghouse.

What gets me most is that people believe that this type of treatment is normal, that it is perfectly acceptable in this society, in 2008. How can some people be left behind when it comes to understanding animal welfare? Is it laziness, or is it something far more sinister, like willfull ignorance?

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