The internet is one of the more powerful inventions created by man in the last few decades. With the ability to send massive amounts of information instantaneously to each other, we are able to increase our business output, share thoughts and ideas with one another and have a 24/7 repository of all the information we need.
Despite this, people would rather ejaculate misinformation without a second thought because THEY KNOW what's up.
This is a story about a stray dog which was put down by the Humane Society of Missouri. To give you a little back story on your humble author, I dated a HSMO veterinarian for a year a while back, and my wife's parents volunteer as dog walkers at the Humane Society. I take my dogs and cats there for checkups and medicine. HSMO took in a large influx of pit bulls a few years back from a dog fighting ring, many of which were rehabilitated and adopted out, and regularly take care of neglected animals all over the state. I have nothing but respect for the people who do that job every day.
Have you ever heard of something more American than getting pissed off that a dog didn't get a damned wheelchair? It's a dog, there are lots of them all over the place, and this one had parts of it ripped up, chewed off and gangrenous. And those are only the medical issues the article told us about.
This is problem one with comments on the internet. Arm chair doctors with a PhD in google searching means they don't need to rely on things such as "facts" or "knowledge" to form an opinion. Put a hand truck underneath the missing legs and it's good as new! How could they not see that?
Of course very few people who complain about these things actually volunteer to take on a special needs dog who will require constant supervision and probably cost a medical fortune. It's a different take of NIMBY, and just as annoying. Some one should save it, but not me.
Lisa and Amy have a textbook idiot conversation here, which brings us to point two and three of my problems with people on the internet. Lisa believes the director of the HSMO should have been taking care of this dog and that no one works at the clinic on the weekend. Lisa knows their jobs better than the people who do the jobs.
Of course the Humane Society has weekend hours, and no injured dog is thrown into a crate and told to get over it for the weekend. There are literally hundreds of dogs at the Humane Society on Mackland. Right now. Hundreds at any given time. You think there isn't a doctor or two watching over the place? If not, I need to check up on the vet who took care of my cats a few weekends ago.
The other annoyance is giving unbelievable information without a source which others just blindly accept as truth. Where are these animals with worse injuries who are being left for a long time in shelters? Unless it's a shelter to specifically abuse animals, I'm going to assume it doesn't exist.
Also, the people at the Humane Society named the dog. People planning to just off animal willy-nilly don't give the dog an affectionate name.
Problem four: Confirmation Bias. I imagine we have just as many shitty animal abusers as any other place. I don't even know where Elke is getting this, unless they read nothing but animal abuse stories and just assume nothing else is happening in the city.
Problem five: The dipshit who didn't read all eleven sentences of the story before commenting.
Problem six: I want justice! I want to yell at the person who did this on an internet comments section they will never read! Because I'm internet tough!
Problem seven: This hot mess of word soup. Some people can't be bothered to be coherent.
I do my best to find as much information on things before I get all judgmental, and I understand not everyone has the time to do in depth research before coming to their conclusions, but critical thinking has taken a hit on the internet, and it's evidenced in these comments.
I'm not stone hearted here. I love my dogs and cats, but sometimes it's better to put an animal down due to injuries or temperament. Either way, I can't make that call from my computer screen. If HSMO felt the dog would have a life filled with pain and hardship, then putting the dog to sleep was possibly the most merciful thing they could do.
But what do I know? I'm just a guy on the internet.
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