EDITORIAL - Just plain cruel

When people found something decomposing wrapped in a huge tarpaulin and bound in plastic straw the other morning in Sitio Lower Busay in Barangay Malubog, Cebu City, they immediately assumed the worst. After all it wouldn’t be the first time someone was murdered then disposed of in such an undignified manner.

However, it was later found out that the package contained the carcass of a dog, specifically a huge labrador.

Police are now looking for who disposed of the carcass as no one saw who left the tarpaulin there.

We know it was just an animal, but for a beloved companion and supposedly man’s best friend, this was no way to treat the remains of one.

Emotions aside, leaving the carcass as it was might also lead to a health hazard considering the size of the dog and how little protection the carcass had against the elements.

We really hope that the animal was not meant to be disposed of in that way, that it had just fallen off a vehicle or become somehow misplaced or something. Or that the dog had been accidentally run over and the panicked driver was forced to get rid of it quickly.

Even that the carcass was deliberately placed as a message to create fear among residents, as police also surmise.

Because the alternative is too cruel to consider; that some of us just think of the remains of our animal companions as trash or garbage, something to be discarded without a second thought, after they have crossed the rainbow bridge.

It seems that some of us just aren’t cut out to be pet owners. Animal companions aren’t just there for our comfort, amusement, and entertainment. We also have responsibilities to them while they are alive and even after they die.

To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi, our greatness can be measured by how we treat animals. Considering how many of us treat animals; starving them, abandoning them, and hurting or poisoning them in the case of strays, some of us have a long way to go in this regard.