Editorial
Front Page - Friday, July 23, 2010
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Buttons was a dog who cared
Pettus L. Read
?Buttons was a Boston terrier dog that became a favorite at our house back in my early childhood. She was very loveable and sort of became my dog even though she really belonged to the entire family.? I was only six years old when she was to have her first and only litter of puppies, but I still remember the disappointment of that day when all three were stillborn. I had so much looked forward to having her puppies to play with and to raise, but that was not to be.
Just as disappointed as I was, Buttons had also suffered the loss emotionally as well and for several weeks she couldn’t understand that her puppies were gone.? We would miss socks from our dirty clothes basket and find them neatly placed in a little group in Button’s bed as if they were her pups. She would only get the black socks that resembled what her puppies would have looked like. It was truly a sad time, but because we cared for our dog, we gave her special attention and helped her through those tough weeks.
In later years, as I grew up on our family farm, I found myself dealing with some of the same types of problems with our livestock that I had shared with Buttons, only that the size of the animals involved were a lot larger than a Boston terrier.
We had a dairy farm along with acreage that also housed goats, pigs, horses and beef animals. Everyday we found ourselves treating cows that had problems having calves, becoming ill due to some type of infection, horses with foot injuries, goats with their heads hung in a fence and all types of things that are just a part of what you have to deal with if you are the keeper of livestock.
All of those years that I spent on the farm, I saw the same treatment given to all animals by my father, brother, employees and myself when care was needed much like what Buttons received when special attention was what made her better during a very difficult time. Our animals came first regardless of the weather, the holiday, the breed or the value. A baby pig got as much attention as a mother cow and it was even sort of fun to have a litter of baby pigs in a basket behind the stove in the kitchen along with a half-frozen calf on a cold winter’s night.
Mom never complained either. She understood we were farmers and caretakers of our herds and if it meant sharing the warmth of our home at times to save a small one’s life that is what we did. ?
Over the past 40 plus years as I have worked in agriculture, I have spent my entire career literally with the farmers of this state and have seen them give the same care for their farm animals on their farms that we gave to ours back during my farm kid days. Farming has changed, but the concern by the farmer for the care of their livestock has not. A true farmer has that gut feeling of concern for an animal to do what is right when their needs must be addressed. To harm is not part of that feeling and don’t let anyone tell you different.
Just recently, the animal advocacy group Mercy for Animals released a terrible video. They claim it was an undercover video shot on an Ohio dairy farm and at the beginning of the video advised the content was graphic and disturbing. I attempted to watch a very small amount and it was more than disturbing. I find it hard to believe anyone could do that to an animal and there was no way I could even watch what was going on in that short amount of video I tried to watch. All involved deserve to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and hopefully that will happen.
However, another thing also bothered me after seeing that video. It was reported that this was undercover video and having worked for many years with a camera myself, in my opinion, the person doing the evil knew the camera was there and looked several times directly at it.? I’ve shot a lot of video and there is no way I could have shot this covered or under covered. I don’t see how anyone stood there and let this go on. I believe there is enough real farm boy left in me that one of us would have had to holler uncle and there would not have been any need for undercover camera work to have continued.? They shot 20 hours of footage and that is too long to have let this gone on and in my opinion it sounds like the investigate team was guilty of something as well.
Catching wrong doers needs to be done, but standing there and not helping makes you as guilty as leaving the scene of a crime. Those animals got no mercy from Mercy. Just 20 hours of a video production for a “cause.”?
Pettus L. Read is Director of Communications for the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation. He may be contacted by e-mail at pread@tfbf.com
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