A black eye for all of us

 It’s wrong to rush to judgment until all the facts are in, so we’re not going to. But the allegations that Chesterfield County employees took dogs from the animal shelter to the landfill across the street, gunned them down and buried their carcasses is beyond disturbing, if true.

Domesticated animals rely on humans for their food, water, shelter, companionship and love. Unfortunately, we all too often fail to provide one, some or all of those things. Sometimes the situation becomes so dire that the best thing we can provide an unwanted animal is a dignified, pain-free death. That’s the message given to us just a few days ago by a high-ranking member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). It’s very telling that an organization that has a tremendous zeal and drive to protect animal rights admits that euthanasia is sometimes the last and best gift we can give an animal.

But let’s look at the source of the problem. Quite simply, it’s overbreeding. There are many false myths connected with pet breeding and in future issues of the Progressive Journal we’re going to examine several of those and explain their flaws.

The bottom line is, there are far too many puppies and kittens produced in this country for them all to end up in caring loving homes. PETA estimates as many as four million unwanted pets are euthanized in the United States each year. Pets that would have been better off if they had never been born. Pets like those who were allegedly killed in Chesterfield County last week.

The shelters get a lot of undue criticism for doing what has to be done, but shooting animals is not the way. Not at all.

Sheriff Sam Parker has also received a lot of criticism over the past several days, and some of it is justified. Even if he didn’t know what was going on at the shelter, he’s the head man. A general should still be held to some degree of responsibility for his troops’ actions.

But to the sheriff’s credit, he apparently jumped on the investigation immediately, put those thought to be responsible on administrative leave and finally turned to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) to complete the investigation. All good moves in our eyes.

Even if SLED and the Attorney General find no criminal wrongdoing, we hope Sheriff Parker continues to do the right thing and take swift and effective action against those responsible. Not as the sheriff, but as an effective supervisor of his department.

This story has made the national news and it casts all of us in a bad light. We’re sure most of us would never take a harmless animal to a landfill and shoot it. But that’s the perception the rest of the country has of us. Good ol’ boys who just want to grab a gun and kill an animal for fun while grinning out of our toothless mouths. The few who fit that stereotype give us all a bad name.