A big astounding YES! Have you ever heard someone make the comment, "It's only a dog! (or cat, bunny etc.)" ONLY a dog??? Just exactly what does that mean? Does this person mean that this animal is only a thing? A possession that can be discarded like a plastic cup or a toy that is no longer wanted? Does it mean the animal has no rights whatsoever?

I believe animals have the right to live free of suffering just as humans have the same right. The majority of people don't want to see an animal suffer. When we see an animal suffering, we want to stop it. This is called compassion

Animals can feel pain and suffer just as humans do, therefore, no one should cause them to suffer unnecessarily. Animal Welfare people consider "unnecessary suffering" as any suffering beyond that which is required to use the animal for any given purpose. For example, millions of animals are killed each year to make fur coats. The animal is usually caught in a leg hold trap which hardly ever kills the animal right away. The animal's leg is caught and it may struggle for days to get free. The animal is terrified and is most likely in constant pain. Sometimes it will free itself by chewing off his own leg and later bleed to death or die from an infection. This kind of suffering, in my opinion, is unnecessary and unethical. The fact that animals are unnecessarily killed is reason enough to have an objection to fur. A PERSON'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE WHAT THEY WEAR IS NOT A MORE IMPORTANT RIGHT THAN AN ANIMAL'S RIGHT TO LIFE.

We see animals exploited in factory farms, labs, the circus and in the wild. A whale may take up to 20 minutes to die after being harpooned. A lynx could suffer up to a week with her leg caught in a steel trap. An animal, poisoned with a household product in a lab could linger for hours or days in complete agony before dying. We are all animals yet, we treat non-humans as unfeeling things. There is good scientific evidence that other animals can suffer like we do. Their nervous systems are similar and contain the same biochemicals that we know are associated with the experience of pain. Saying we can exploit animals because we are superior is nothing more than to say that we are more powerful than they.

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