Killing puppies

There’s a big hoo-ha about the “Marines killing a puppy video,” a bit of nastiness, whether real or faked, that is giving the anti-military crowd a lot of grist for their “the military creates monsters” mill.  I learned something interesting, though, at From my position . . . on the way!  It turns out that the military does a lot of dog killing, not for perverse sport, but for humanitarian reasons:

Cruel? Maybe. Not as cruel as watching a child die from a disease, borne on the mangy hides of these canine vectors. (Read: dysentery, typoid, rabies, Helicobacter heilmannii, (causes gastritis) Leishmania infantum and Leishmania chagasi, which cause lesions which will not heal and lead to other infections, trypanosomiasis (Chagas disease–google it) visceral leishmaniasis,Young puppies are potential transmitters of human-pathogenic Campylobacter spp., including C. upsaliensis).

Because the Third World doesn’t offer clean, peaceful doggy euthanasia clinics, guns are the way to go, with all the unpleasant (for the dogs) variables that go along with that method of killing.  (Variables meaning the possibility of painfully wounding, not killing.)  A cliff toss is a sure thing (assuming, again, it was a real cliff toss and not a fake):

Tossing a dog off a cliff seems a certain way to assure a quick death. So is it more humane to shoot them, or toss them? Certainly, humane describes a modicum of compassion, contributing minimally to suffering. Cliff tossing seems to be distasteful, but definitely less suffering is involved on the part of the dog.

The fact that these two jarheads took communications media classes at lyndie england’s school for journalism is more troubling.

Food for thought there, my friends.  Food for thought.