IT was a brief news report in a daily paper, some 30 years ago. I can remember not just its contents but its exact position on the page, too. Some stories have that effect on you.
It related how a man had bundled his dog into his car and driven to a remote spot. Once there, he stopped the car, opened the door, pulled the animal out, got back into the car and sped off.
The next line haunted me for a long time: the dog, evidently thinking this was a new game, raced eagerly after the car disappeared out of sight. The owner, of course, had no intention of ever returning. The dog was later found, starving and exhausted.
It was just one report among many of animals being abandoned or treated cruelly that I have read over the years. Each one depresses me more than I can possibly say.
Under the heading 'Record number of animal cruelty bans' the Scottish SPCA, in its annual review for 2014, said a record number of people were banned last year from keeping animals following investigations by the charity: Scottish courts handed out 63 disqualification orders, 12 of them for life.
I thought about animal cruelty, and that abandoned dog, once again this week when Ricky Gervais had reacted in bullish fashion (pun not intended) to news of a death in Spain.
Four days ago he tweeted a link to a news footage about a man being gored in the abdomen by a bull at an event for athletes called recortadores, in Lerin, Navarra, northern Spain. The man was reported to have been pronounced dead after being taken by air ambulance to a hospital in nearby Pamplona.
"Poor terrified bull," was Gervais's unambiguous observation. "Ban cruel sports." Shortly afterwards, he elaborated: "Neither I nor any bull wants you to fight it. But if you insist I hope it defends itself. ---- anyone who tortures an animal for fun."
The footage from Lerin is not easy to watch, even if much of it has been pixellated out. The knowledge that a man's life has been snuffed out in the name of sport is a sobering one, to say the least.
And yet, and yet. The man presumably knew the risks of entering a bull-ring with a maddened, panicked bull. And on the the same day as Gervais's tweets, it was reported that at least 10 people had been fatally gored during bull runs across Spain this summer, including four over the weekend just past.
Whatever you may think of Gervais's comedy, there is no doubt that he devotes much of his time to animal rights activism. It's not merely that he is given to tweeting pictures of his cat Ollie with the heartfelt hashtag 'Be kind to animals'; he regularly airs animal welfare issues on Twitter and has received, he says, overwhelming support.
Bullfighting is a thorny issue. It's a tradition as ancient as it is steeped in blood. The sport had already been banned in a couple of places in Spain but a decision two years ago by the country's Parliament to grant it cultural-heritage status made it difficult for there to be any further bans.
But not every Spaniard is an enthusiastic follower; a 2013 survey showed that fully three-quarters hadn't attended a bullfight in the last five years. Much more recently, a cadre of newly-elected left-wing Spanish mayors made it plain that they would not be sorry to see the demise of bullfighting. In any event, Spain's economic downturn has reportedly led to a sharp decline in the number of bullfights.
I've never seen a bullfight and have no desire to. I couldn't bear to see bulls being tormented and killed in front of enthusiastic crowds. But Gervais makes an impassioned case for abolition, one with which I can only agree.
People, he says, will say the sport is traditional - "but so was slavery, so was ------- burning witches at the stake. So was child sacrifice. We've moved on.
"If something's terrible, you don't justify it by going: 'Well, it is terrible but we've done it for ages'. Well, it's about ------- time you stopped then. We've moved on, haven't we? I mean surely progress, at its core, is society maximising compassion and minimising suffering? Why do we need [bullfighting]?I just don't get it."
Well said, Ricky.
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