Abuse

Today my dog lunged at me.

Teeth out, crazy look in her eyes and for the first time in 2.5 years I was afraid of her.

We were on the couch – she was sleeping with her head on my legs.

I moved.

She snapped.

I cried.

What the hell did you do to her?

She knew immediately what she did was wrong and went in her crate and cowered. Even though I did not yell at her – and I sure as hell did not blame her.

She is broken.

I blame you.

When I saw her in the shelter – emaciated and so shut down she had to be carried out to me, my heart broke and I hated you with every ounce of my being for doing that to her.

She could barely walk from her back legs being too weak.

How long did you keep her crated with no room to move?

How much money did you make from the puppies you made her have?

She has lived with us for 2.5 years now.

She still cowers when a hand is over her head.

She is still on guard every waking minute of the day.

She spends more time awake than asleep because she lives in a world of fear.

This is all your fault.

But those times she does let it down – and can be a dog, make all the work worth it.

When she is in the yard with a ball, she is a dog.

Just a dog – without a care in the world.

I tell myself she is making up for the years of play she never had.

Because you never spent an ounce of time with her.

When she is on a walk – her second favorite thing to do, she walks proud – she takes time to enjoy everything and looks back at me to make sure I am right by her side. I assure her I am and always will be.

Those are the moments that matter to me.

She will never be able to just enjoy being in a room full of people handing out hugs.

She still puts her tail between her legs and cowers to the ground when meeting new people.

She still gets nervous when we go new places, we are assuming because she is afraid of being dumped.

She still licks constantly because she is always nervous.

She is still broken.

I hate you for that.

She is a pit bull/Plott hound mix.

I am assuming you liked her look and her breed because you think you are cool and could make easy money.

I want to make it clear that her breed had nothing to do with her lunging at me.

YOU had everything to do with it. 

She was found roaming the streets of Elizabeth, NJ emaciated and broken.

What happened – she piss you off?

Or were her puppies not worth enough?

Whatever it was I am thankful you let her go so she could find a better life.

I do not know the evil that runs in your head to do what you did to her.

I can only hope that there are no other animals in your home.

I want you to know the dog you beat, well she is mine.

She is LOVED. She is SAFE. 

And I am doing everything I can to make you disappear from her mind.

Maybe you never felt loved or safe in your life.

Maybe having control over an innocent animal makes you feel like a big man.

I think it just makes you a weak asshole.

But thank you for allowing me to be the one to make her life as amazing as we can.

Thank you for letting me be the one to try and get rid of the demons that lie within her head.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to be the one that makes her smile and do zoomies in the yard.

Thank you for offering me the chance to really understand how wonderful it is to rescue a broken dog, because she has taught me more than I could ever imagine about forgiveness, patience, love and trust.

Some may say I should get rid of her if she can snap for no reason.

But that will NEVER happen, because she deserves to have the life she has.

She deserves a chance to be a happy go lucky dog that wags her tail freely and can enjoy the touch of a stranger.

While that may never happen – she deserves the chance.

But you, you deserve nothing good in life.

I wish you no evil or harm – that is not my style.

But I do hope that someone – somewhere can change your evil heart.

To Those That Take The Broken Animals.

I wanted to say thank you.

Thank you to every adopter, foster and rescue that gives broken dogs like Cleo a chance.

It is not an easy road with a dog like her.

It takes a whole lotta’ patience, a whole lotta’ love and a whole lotta’ sacrifice to care for a dog that has been emotionally damaged from abuse and neglect.

So if you are caring for one – THANK YOU.

I never considered myself “special” because I kept her.

But I do realize that many would have given up a long time ago.

Having a dog that is not “fun” or “carefree” is not usually what a potential adopter wants.

So for those of you taking the harder path – you are amazing and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving these broken souls a chance at an amazing life.

Personally – I will do it all over again when the opportunity comes my way because caring for Cleo is one of the best things I have ever done in my life.

Animal abuse is probably the number 1 issue we here at CharityPaws want to make the biggest impact in. It happens everywhere – in the mansion on the other side of town, in the comfortable middle-class home down the street and the trailer park downtown. There is no financial disparity – lifestyle disparity or segregator that makes one group of people abuse animals more than others.

We have seen so many stories of abuse it makes our heads hurt and our hearts break. From not being fed, chained outdoors all year round to explicit physical abuse for the fun of it – the problem runs deep.

The penalties are often a slap on the wrist if someone is caught which makes it all the more frustrating for those of us who want to bring change for animals.

If we can continue to move forward with education – persist in campaigning for harsher penalties and helping as many animals as we can, we can make a difference.

Below are some animal abuse marketing campaigns that we personally love and hope they can inspire you or any organization you are part of to up your marketing game! Although sometimes it can be scary to create campaigns that are edgy or hard to look at – you can see they can be incredibly powerful!

Tough Judge Campaign

An amazing campaign with beautiful imagery and strong text that makes a clear statement.

Created by the RufLanz agency for Tier Im Recht, which is an organization that works hard on improving the human animal relationship from a legal, ethical and social sense. They are based in Germany and seem to take a pretty strong stance on animal abuse as shown in these campaigns.

The vision of an animal in a judges wig brings home the clear statement that they take animal abuse seriously and you will be judged and tried! The organization works hard to create and enforce animal welfare laws so this campaign is a great asset to their mission.

Treated Like Garbage

Another strong emotional campaign from the RufLanz marketing team for the Tier Im Recht organization.

The campaign brings to light the fact that so many animals are “treated like garbage” – and this campaign does a great job of making you feel something when you see it. While for many it may be very hard to look at – that is kind of the goal – to reach deep inside and make you feel enough to want to spread the message and change some minds of those who do treat animals this way.

And no animals were to create these images – while imagery was captured it is through the magic of digital editing that the tied up look was able to come to fruition!

Leave Abuse Behind

A great visual of how adopted animals seem to have this incredible ability to leave their pasts behind no matter how bad they were. The campaign is inspiring and gives a great impact to how adopting abused animals is a fresh start for them – and a lifetime of love for you. Campaign was created by M&C Saatchi for the RSPCA in Australia.

So, what do you think? Love them? Hate Them?

Have more examples that we should include? Just share them in the comments and we will take a peak!