Dear Future President,

My name is Colby, I am 12 years old, and I live in Watsonville California. I am concerned about the amount of animals being abused, not fed, and neglected. Last summer I was at a summer camp and we saw a dog. The leaders of the camp were very concerned for all of the kids. Then one of my really good friends got a jump rope and got the dog on a leash type thing. We walked around the neighborhood and no one claimed the dog. It looked like it had infections, it had cuts all over, and it was the skinniest dog I've ever seen. We fed him and gave him water, then animal control took him. This made me sad because the owner of the dog didn't care enough to look for the dog, or even take care of him. This really opened my eyes to all the animals getting neglected, and abused. "It is unfortunate that many people who witness or hear about acts of animal cruelty are unaware that legal action can be taken to help stop the problem," says Dr. Larry Hawk, ASPCA President and CEO. "Education and activism are the keys to solving this battle."

According to www.humanesociety.org in their article "animal cruelty facts, and stats"  Approximately 1 million animals are abused or killed a year in connection with domestic violence.70.1% involved dogs, 20.9% involved cats, and 24.1% involved other animals. Why do people abuse animals you may ask. Well, not everyone abuses for the same reason. One reason could be they have been abused and they think that a good way to treat people and things. They may also not know they are hurting the animal, for example, if someone goes on vacation and leaves their dog in a cage with minimal food and water that could really hurt them but they  wouldn't even know.  Once a person abuses an animal they are most likely not just going to do it once. They will fall into a cycle of abuse and that can really hurt the animal, and possibly even kill it. 

Pets are not the only animals being abused. Animals in zoos, and places like sea world are also getting abused. Let's take my favorite animal the elephant, for example. In the wild, elephants walk miles a day in open free space. If they are in a zoo, they do not have that space they have a tiny enclosure, that they stay in all day. They expect to take a 6 to 13 thousand pound elephant and keep it in a tiny enclosure and live their life to its full potential. In zoos elephants life about 16-18 years while in the wild, they live 50-70 years. 

Also the Orca whales at places at Sea World are in danger. They take a huge Orca that is 6-8 thousand pounds, that lives in the ocean with endless possibility on where to travel and trap in in essentially a pool where they can really only swim back and forth. If you ever see an Orca whale in captivity you may see they have a bent over fin, if you see an orca in the ocean its extremely unlikely they will have a bent over fin. It only happens when they are in captivity, as well as baby orcas being taken away. When there are baby whales at Sea World it very likely they are going to be taken away from their mother, because young whales are very attached to there mothers so the mothers are likely to get depressed. In captivity orcas live 17-29 years while in the wild they live 50-100 year. Captive whales are getting robbed of there long awesome life in the ocean. 

What should we do? well for pets getting abused we should keep it on record of who abuses their animals. If they go to buy another animal they have to go through a background check. On the otherhand for zoos and places like sea world. We cant just stop supporting them. It needs to be so they cant take the animals out of their natural habitat. Thank you for reading, and lets make an effort together.

Respectfully Yours, 

Colby