Fear factor for kids or animal education?

Doubleday Canada Limited
By Sheila Reynolds
Jul 30 2006

I often boast about my children - wise beyond their years, clever senses of humour and highly intelligent, of course.

So I was thrilled when my seven-year-old daughter came to me recently with more fodder for the brag book.

"Mom," she said. "When I get a pet... I'm not getting it from a pet store, I'm getting it from the SPCA."

"That's great, sweetie," I beamed, feeling I'd so far succeeded in raising a socially conscious, empathetic young girl.

"Because you know what?" she continued. "This man, he beat his dog with a stick."

"Pardon?" I responded with wide eyes.

"And then, he tied him to a hot radiator underneath some stairs so he couldn't hear the dog's helpless yelps," she recited, stumbling a little over what sounded like lines from a script.

My smile gone, I asked what she was talking about. Then I figured out a BCSPCA commercial had come on TV while she and her brother were watching The Wonderful World of Disney.

I've since seen said ad and was a little alarmed by its sensationalism. While most likely a true story, the commercial repeatedly flashes images of a dog, as doe-eyed as an orphan in a World Vision infomercial, peering up at the camera while a dramatic narrator tells his tragic story of mistreatment. Every detail. Then she asks for a donation and provides a phone number.

A similar situation occurred when my kids went to the local reptile refuge, a place they'd been before and had found interesting and educational.

This time when they returned home, my daughter and her four-year-old brother treated me to a tale about a couple in the United States who kept a pair of monitor lizards in their apartment. When the guy didn't show up for work one day, his boss wondered why. Two days passed, then three. Finally, the police entered the home and found nothing but skeletons and the lizards roaming around, said the kids.

That was followed by the story about the 10-year-old boy being consumed by a snake and the description of the shelter's resident albino python slowly dying in a back room due to its inability to eat, a product of its exotic breeding.

Another dad had to politely tell the owner to rein in the "death stories."

I get it. Reptiles shouldn't be pets. And no one should be abusing their dogs, horses, cats, rabbits, hamsters or any other critters.

My kids understand that, too.

But it's not because we pepper their bedtime with animal horror stories. We simply teach them to be kind to all living things, from the tiniest of insects to the meanest-looking canine.

There's no question it is the mandate of animal protection and rescue organizations to educate folks - especially future generations - that animal cruelty is simply not acceptable. Some people obviously don't heed that important message and perhaps shock value is necessary for those who want a pet boa or believe it's okay to beat Fido to keep him quiet.

But I suggest the target audience be considered before the gory details are delivered.

Sheila Reynolds is a reporter with The Surrey-North Delta Leader, a Black Press sister paper of The Tri-City News.

© Copyright 2006 The Tri-City News

Doubleday Canada Limited