Many studies prove that there is a link between animal cruelty and other violence. Animals are being abused, neglected, and abandoned everywhere. Although the crimes very rarely result in any jail time, which in my opinion is extremely sad. Some states are stricter than others on this law. “For instance, a person’s first conviction for animal cruelty is a Class 1 Misdemeanor, but a second or subsequent conviction for animal cruelty is a Class 6 Felony,” says one ASPCA supervisor about Colorado’s laws on animal cruelty. Although there are many different laws on animal endangerment all around the world, I think that the laws should all be the same – People should go to jail no matter the extant of animal endangerment that person participated in.

A lot of people do not believe this, but it is a proven fact that animals do have feelings too. Their feelings just aren’t expressed in the same way that humans feelings are. Animals don’t talk to their friends and family for advice on something they are unsure of, or when they really like something they don’t tell everyone about it. Think about this, what does your pet do when you walk in the door from being gone all day? The pet usually gets extremely excited and you can tell they just have a burst of energy. That’s because they are feeling excited or happy to see you. What happens when you accidentally step on your pets toe or paw? The pet will ‘yipe’ just like we would if we were in pain. These are just a few examples of evidence on animals having feelings too.

Another reason for people to go to jail for participating in animal endangerment would be that shelters are overloaded and can’t support anymore homeless pets. These shelters are having more and more unnecessary deaths of household pets. If abandoned pets are put into shelters, how long can they live there for? Until one day their spot will have to be filled by new abandoned pets? And once there’s no room, these animals will have to be put down for no reason at all but the fact that humans poorly treated them. The statistics for pets in shelters are very bad, about eight million animals enter shelters, only about half of those animals leave alive.

There is only one downfall to people serving time for animal endangerment. And this problem is that there could be too many people in jail. There already are a lot of people in jail for other crimes; so many people that we have a ton of jails. There are a lot of cases of animal endangerment, (or this wouldn’t be an issue) so that would mean a lot more people even being in jail. There are a lot of crimes, some worse than others. And many people think that this isn’t a major crime, but those people need to think about those animals who have been abused, neglected, and abandoned without a warm home to stay in with owners who love and care for it.

A really bad case of animal endangerment leads to breeding and the behind the scenes of breeding. In most breeding situations the animal’s health is not the most important thing. These breeders make the importance of the breeding the profit, and how much they will gain from one animal. A major breeding problem is puppy mills, and no states have laws against this… yet. These poor puppies are housed in cages that are overcrowded and very, very unsanitary, that means there is a ton of bad diseases and infections the puppies can get a hold of. With breeders there are less people adopting pets from shelters where they will eventually lose their lives if not saved. So next time you think about adopting a pet, think about the life you can save, from a shelter that is.

Overall I think everyone wants to know, why abandon a pet? Well here are some excuses that people have used: house training problems, veterinary costs, barking, aggression, etc. but really there are no excuses. Honestly people should consider all of these factors previous of buying or taking responsibility for that animal. Once someone adopts an animal that person then has full responsibility for that animal. This means that no matter what happens to this animal, it is the owners fault who should therefore go to jail for any endangerment upon this pet.