Dear Editor: My kids and I adopted a puppy, white with black ears, pot-belly, one blue eye, one brown. We named him Casper. He loved peanut butter, learned to shake in one day and ran backwards on walks, ferociously playing tug with his leash. He raced passing cars down the length of our fenced yard like a bullet.
One day he escaped for a playful jaunt down the street, where he was hit and killed by one of those cars. We loved him dearly, and years later this tragedy devastates us still.
Six years ago I became aware of places manufacturing tragedies. My stomach churns when I insert Casper into the equation, his yelping from pain and terror is ignored as he outgrows his stacked filthy cage and runs claustrophobic circles to nowhere. Tears welling, I’m unwilling to envision the horrors awaiting him at the lab where suffering of the unloved justifies well-being of the loved. How do we distinguish man’s best friend, valued and adored, from man’s disposable plate, used then tossed in the garbage?…