The Animal Rights Aruba foundation (ARA) regularly gets phone calls about abused or maltreated dogs and other animals. Some stories defy the imagination, especially of people who love animals, and they might serve to help people take notice of circumstances that are far from right. So here is a story, sent in by someone who is clearly very upset about what she witnessed.
“A few days ago I saw a goat near a house under construction. He was limping on three legs; one hind leg was clearly broken and was dangling at a weird angle. When I came closer, I saw that the animal was skin and bones. Inside the house there lay quite a lot of goat waste, so he had been hiding there for quite some time already. I called the vet of the ARA and we agreed that she would come to help the animal by putting it to sleep, but when I went back to feed the goat, I saw that the dangling part of the leg had gone. I looked, but could not find the missing part of the leg. Then I closed the house so that the goat would still be there when the vet would come. In the neighborhood I saw a young dog nibbling on the goat’s leg – a horrible sight.”
“A few hours later I came back with the vet, but the goat had gone. A neighbor said that the owner had come to pick up the animal and yes, indeed: we found the goat inside a small shed on the terrain of the owner, with just a piece of cloth tied around the stump, still suffering terribly. When the neighbors told him that people had come by, the owner must have gotten scared, so that he took his goat back in.”
We would like to state that this is clearly a case of animal abuse. The owner knew that his injured goat would die when left on its own. His other goats were all fenced in and he had abandoned his animal to die a terrible death. This story might be too late to save this poor goats life, but please notify the ARA when abuse takes place, so that the suffering of animals on Aruba might be lessened