This is fucked up, but is this functionally worse than freezing mice and rats for snake food? Would we be more comfortable if he had been freezing lambs or piglets for his snake to eat? Should he have euthanized the snake once it grew too large to live on rats? Snakes are carnivores and eat meat. Puppies are just a really cute and loveable configuration of meat. Puppy mills, COVID lockdowns, and the increase in living expenses have resulted in a crisis of too many pets that need homes. Too many dogs are being bred, and too many dogs are being euthanized.
I'm not in any way condoning snake owners freezing puppies to death. It's just weird the way we compartmentalize animal abuse so we can ignore the suffering of animals we arbitrarily choose not to care about.
Mice are cute, but dogs communicate trust and love for us so very clearly. Betraying such trust is for monsters.
This is the answer. We domesticated them. We’re responsible to them. Collectively we owe it to them not to cause them undue harm.
Were they frozen to death, or frozen after death? It really does make a difference.
Exactly. If he was humanely euthanizing them and then freezing them for snake food then there really isn't anything that wrong here. I know most people would prefer that the meat of choice not be puppies but that's just how western society views dogs. But societal views aside it's no different than using piglets which are what a lot of large snake owners use.
I guess it would depend on Oregon's definition of cruelty and what constitutes as "good animal husbandry."
Is that crime specific to puppies or in theory they woukd have got into trouble if they froze another animal like a rat or mouse or rabbit ?
Frozen rodents are already a thing for snake food. They feed rats to snakes no problem and rats really intelligent creatures.
The choice of puppies is weird but a snakes gotta eat and you can't exactly just feed them a head of lettuce. Is puppies really that much worse than piglets or rabbits?
Once a snake gets to a certain size rats won't be enough anymore. At that size there aren't any good mass market options so those snake owners will usually take what they can get. I knew a guy that bred reticulated pythons and he wound up having a deal with a pig farm where they would sell him any piglets that happened to die early for dirt cheap (because what else where they going to do with them). But if you don't luck into an arrangement like that what do you do? If you have an ample supply of unwanted puppies I guess it would make sense to use puppies. As awful it sounds to western sensibilities, dogs are livestock in other parts of the world.
Maybe don’t own an animal you’re not prepared to take care of?
He was taking care of it. Just not with meat that most westerners like thinking of as meat.
Look at a bag of frozen baby mice or rats. It’s just as sad as puppies.
*horrible story about literal puppies*
Dorks on Lemmy: Ok, but hear me out
Care to explain how this is any worse than what we already do with cows or pigs without invoking cuteness? What about what we do to rats which are just as socially/emotionally intelligent as dogs (and compared to many breeds more so)?
I really, genuinely, fully don't think you can.
Aside from dlpkl's loose emotionally driven argument, I personally believe doing it to any animal is just sad and terrible. On the contrary, I do realize the tough world we live in, and these pets need meat to eat. I rather hope this arrest is over the fact that it is possible these puppies could not be put to death in a humane manner. Also, I wish there are more regulations on humane treatment of animals. Even humans are not always treated humanely. I wouldn't ever want human babies to be used for animal food either, so it's always a moving line, you know, because that's what a complex subject like this brings.
never ask a meat eater what the difference between killing dogs and pigs is
