Man Forced to Wear Sign for Animal Cruelty

[Marlania]

This could get interesting, so I posted it in the kitchen. I ran across this on one of my dog forums.

Man Forced to Wear Sign for Animal Cruelty

July 22, 2005 7:26 PM EDT

HOPWOOD, Pa. - A western Pennsylvania man said he endured more than he expected when he agreed to an unusual sentence for an animal cruelty conviction.

Ulysses Zimmerman, 22, of Point Marion, pleaded guilty to animal cruelty for allegedly neglecting his dog, denying it veterinary care and strangling the animal.

But Zimmerman didn't pay a fine or spend time in jail. Instead, he stood at a busy intersection in South Union Township Thursday, wearing a sign that read, "I Plead Guilty ... Animal Cruelty is a Crime ... My Dog's Name WAS Salt and Pepper."

Zimmerman was supposed to stand at the intersection for eight hours, but Robin Moore, the Fayette County Humane officer who devised the sentence, allowed Zimmerman to leave early because of all the abuse passing motorists hurled at him.

"Everybody started screaming at me and cussing me. I got there at 9:30 a.m., but Robin said at noon that she'd heard enough and that I could leave," Zimmerman said.

Zimmerman denies he intentionally hurt his pet.

 

[redangel1300]

Sounds like a great idea to me but I think that he should have to have jail time as well. Public humiliation should go along with a lot more crimes today, maybe then people would think before they hurt others(animals included)

 

[CavyKind]

He denies intentionally hurting his pet when he strangled it....who's he kidding?

 

[A4PigHome]

I would have made him stay the whole 8 hours despite what people said or did.

 

[cavy-cool-crazy]

I believe that people who treat animals badly will come back as that animal and see how it feels to be treated so wrong. I'm all for "Naming and shaming" too.

 

[Ly&Pigs]

Next time please include a link to the site you are copying information from. We don't want to get in trouble over copyright issues.

I would have made the man stand there until his sentence was up. I cannot stand abuse in any form.

 

[Marlania]

Sorry, whoever originally posted it on the dog forum didn't include where it was found. However, I got the article from (broken link removed).

 

[Slap Maxwell]

Once I believe they made a man sleep out in the doghouse every night for neglecting his dog.

It is a great way to let them get a taste of their own medicine, BUT jail time should also be added.

 

[Percy's Mom]

In addition to Percy, my soon to be second piggy Caramel, a hamster who looks more like a teeny skinny pig Bailey, 2 cats (Lancelot and Guenevere), I also have a dog, Jasper. The reason I bring him up is that we're Jasper's 3rd owners. His first owner spent time in jail for the way he treated his animals. Jasper is a beagle bassett mix, and quite possibly, although I KNOW I'm biased, the sweetest dog on the face of the planet. This is actually quite shocking considering how he started out. He was bought from a puppy breeder by his first owner for the express purpose of being a hunting dog. Jasper didn't want to hunt. He wanted to play and run and splash in the pond and be a puppy. His first owner didn't like that because that wasn't what he bought him for, so he tied him to the back of his pickup truck and dragged him down the road, ripping Jasper's back open. He (I'm SO glad I don't know the man's name.) was arrested, fined, and imprisoned, but only for 6 months. Jasper spent that entire time in an animal hospital in and out of surgery and on medication, and now has a rather rubbery looking scar down the length of his back. I fully credit his second family for his current loveable temperament. They were an elderly couple who just wanted a companion to brighten their day, but unfortunately had to go to an assisted living center and couldn't take him along, so turned him back into a humane society near here, who from what I can tell, treat animals better than people. Jasper lived in a huge plantation/doggy safe house for several months until I saw him at an adoption booth outside a grocery store with my father and completely fell in love. Since joining our family 4 years ago now, Jasper has been the light of all of our lives, and I can't imagine being without him.

With that lengthy diatribe said, I'm so very glad that there are people out there like Jasper's second family, the humane society that cared for him twice, the dilligent people in the animal hospitals, and all of us here on this forum. Unfortunately, there are also those people (and I use the term lightly) such as the original topic of this thread and Jasper's first owner who are so incredibly cruel and ignorant as to think that animals are possesions that they can do what they please with. If the truth be known, our animals probably possess us more than the other way around, heart and soul.

Sorry that this ended up so lengthy, but things like this get me awfully angry, and I knew that you would all understand even if you just skim by and read the next post. It's a shame more people don't take the time to educate themselves and those around them like all of us are trying to do.

 

[Funnygpigs]

I thought that was well said. :0)

In addition to Percy, my soon to be second piggy Caramel, a hamster who looks more like a teeny skinny pig Bailey, 2 cats (Lancelot and Guenevere), I also have a dog, Jasper. The reason I bring him up is that we're Jasper's 3rd owners. His first owner spent time in jail for the way he treated his animals. Jasper is a beagle bassett mix, and quite possibly, although I KNOW I'm biased, the sweetest dog on the face of the planet. This is actually quite shocking considering how he started out. He was bought from a puppy breeder by his first owner for the express purpose of being a hunting dog. Jasper didn't want to hunt. He wanted to play and run and splash in the pond and be a puppy. His first owner didn't like that because that wasn't what he bought him for, so he tied him to the back of his pickup truck and dragged him down the road, ripping Jasper's back open. He (I'm SO glad I don't know the man's name.) was arrested, fined, and imprisoned, but only for 6 months. Jasper spent that entire time in an animal hospital in and out of surgery and on medication, and now has a rather rubbery looking scar down the length of his back. I fully credit his second family for his current loveable temperament. They were an elderly couple who just wanted a companion to brighten their day, but unfortunately had to go to an assisted living center and couldn't take him along, so turned him back into a humane society near here, who from what I can tell, treat animals better than people. Jasper lived in a huge plantation/doggy safe house for several months until I saw him at an adoption booth outside a grocery store with my father and completely fell in love. Since joining our family 4 years ago now, Jasper has been the light of all of our lives, and I can't imagine being without him.
With that lengthy diatribe said, I'm so very glad that there are people out there like Jasper's second family, the humane society that cared for him twice, the dilligent people in the animal hospitals, and all of us here on this forum. Unfortunately, there are also those people (and I use the term lightly) such as the original topic of this thread and Jasper's first owner who are so incredibly cruel and ignorant as to think that animals are possesions that they can do what they please with. If the truth be known, our animals probably possess us more than the other way around, heart and soul.

Sorry that this ended up so lengthy, but things like this get me awfully angry, and I knew that you would all understand even if you just skim by and read the next post. It's a shame more people don't take the time to educate themselves and those around them like all of us are trying to do.

 

[DeadIrishD]

You know it is weird, we take pets and domesticate them and everything else that we can do, and than expect them to live life the way we want them too, and be who we would like them to be.

When will people learn, to keep pets on the pets terms of living, rather than our own?

 

[kalrik]

He should have had to stay out there the entire day. He should have also been fined and have a prison sentence time. 2 and a half hours is nothing. I would have been one of the rude motorists yelling at him; it is the point of it afterall.

 

[Guinea_Gal]

i agree. That is a small punishment for the abuse that animal had to endure. If the officer let him leave early, he should at least have made up the remaining hours the next day.

 

[LuvMyPiggers]

There was a guy played music too loud (Rap) at 3 am in the morning so the judge made him listen to opera for 4 hours straight.

 

[Carissa]

I live in a rural community where few people value animal life as they should. A lot of guys here shoot and beat stray cats just for fun. When my first Pig, Stan, died I took it very hard, I only had him for a week. He was old, sick and very neglected by his previous owners and I was trying to nurse him back to health. My mother-in-law said to me that I should be happy that he died because now I could get new pigs that looked better. That was almost a year ago and my blood still boils when I think about it. That is the thinking so many people have though, that animals are here to serve and entertain us when really it should be the other way around. I guess sometimes I just get frusterated that nothing I say seems to help maybe if more people had to experience the abuse animals have to go through they would find the compassion to treat all animals better.

 

[Skyenoir]

I think he should have had to stand there for the whole 8 hours, too. Who cares that he was being harrassed? That is what the sentence was all about, him feeling humiliated for what he did.

In the town I live in, apparently there were three guys who in January tortured their 18 year old cat to death and then hung it from a railroad overpass...SICK!!! How anyone could do that to an animal, let alone a PET, is beyond me.

I didn't know about this until I was in Petsmart (this was before I knew better!) and there was a petition regarding the sentencing the oldest guy got. The judge sentenced him to work 100 hours community service in AN ANIMAL SHELTER! People were outraged, saying it is like telling a pedophile they have to work in a daycare. That is all the one guy got, he is an adult and the other two are minors, so I don't know what they had to, or didn't have to, do.

My father in law lives in rural Tennessee, and where he is at there is NO regard for animals. He isn't that way, (although his female cat wasn't spayed until she had a few litters of babies), but everyone around him seems to be. His manx cat had babies, and we took one of them. We have been told she is the only one still living out of the litter. One of the cats was backed over by a car, oops, but one of the others his neighbor took. Well, the neighbor's husband got mad at her one night, and as revenge, he took his wife's new manx kitten, stuck it in a bag, hooked it up to the tailpipe of a running car and asphyxiated it! How sick is that?

 

[StrangeKat]

My mother (whom I don't speak to anymore, by the way) in her younger years, was a cat hoarder. When her cats would breed, she and her boyfriend at the time would drown the kittens shortly after birth. Some people are just sick.

 

[daftscotslass]

People suck. The first time I came across animal cruelty was when I was probably about 11 and I was out with my friend walking her dog (a border collie). We saw some boys playing football (soccer) in the park and wandered past. Turned out the 'football' they were using was a hedgehog.

We ran over and picked the poor animal up and asked the boys how they would like it if we played football with their heads instead? When we threatened them with the SSPCA they slinked off. Hedgie was set free in the nearby field after a check over and a small bowl of dog food.

A lot of animal cruelty is ignorance as well as downright neglect and abuse. Our local rescue centre is a small one, but has around 30 gerbils and 20 dwarf hamsters purely due to people breeding and not realizing they would end up with 10 babies instead of 2 or 3. There are also degus and chipmunks looking for homes, purely because they were bought for novelty value and the owners never realised they had specialist needs.

I'm a big believer that people should be fined a LARGE amount, do jail time and be banned from keeping animals. This year the Scottish SPCA ((broken link removed)) have once again had a spate of incidents with dog owners leaving their animals in cars with temperatures rising to the mid to high 40s (degrees C). The animals died, and had literally started to cook. There is NO excuse for this. The owner of one particular dog was fined £500. Quite frankly, I don't think it's enough. I'm sure they wouldn't leave their child in the car - just leaving the window open a tiny fraction is not sufficient.

Ignorance is really not an excuse in such a situation where anyone using common sense would know it was cruel. Fines and imprisonment, I think, need to be more severely imposed so that it would not only shock the person involved into rethinking their ways, it shows the general population that there is zero tolerance and no excuses for animal cruelty.

 

[bromers]

All I can say is that is a great punishment and people should know what he did. He should not be upset that abuse was hurled at him. He shuld not have left early and I still think that punishment was to light. Is he banned from keeping animals?