Blog 1

I am currently reading Marley & Me. At one point, the narrator/ author, John Grogan tells the readers about something awful. He remembers that:

"We had read enough to steer clear of the so-called puppy mills, those commercial breeding operations that churn out purebreds like Ford churns out Tauruses. Unlike mass-produced cars, however, mass-produced pedigree puppies can come with serious hereditary problems, running the gamut from hip dysplasia to early blindness, brought on by multi-generational inbreeding". (Grogan, 7)

I did a little research on so-called 'puppy mills'. Apparently, the sellers view these living, breathing animals as cash-crop. So in order to make the most profit, the people who run puppy mills spend hardly any money on taking care of the dogs. The puppies get little or no excersise. Many become 'kennel crazy' and constantly run in circles. They recieve inadequite nutrition. Also, according to Friends of Animals,

"Puppy mills typically confine large numbers of dogs in rows of crudely constructed, over-crowded pens. The floors are constructed of wiring to allow feces and urine to drop to the ground below. This causes discomfort to the animals’ paws. Considered nothing more than breeding stock, mother dogs are forced to have litters at an early age, and kept continually pregnant. Mother dogs are killed when they’re no longer able to produce a profitable litter size."

My question is: what made people think that they could use innocent animals to make their money? Who made humans supirior to animals? The people who run puppy mills should think about how the animals feel. I have been told several times, while arguing my reasons for being a vegitarian, that 'animals are here for us.'. SINCE WHEN??? Humans have no right to use living, breathing animals for money. As Grogan's quote says, puppies from puppy mills are usually very sick. Who do puppy mill owners think they are? It is completely unethical to doom a poor puppy to a life of misery just for a few extra bucks. I think that puppy mills are wrong, and they should be stopped. "Man's best friend" is suffering, we need to help. For more information about puppy mills, go to http://stoppuppymills.org

Outside Reading Choice

For my outside reading book, I chose the #1 New York Times Bestseller, which was made into a movie that starred Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson. "Marley & Me" by John Grogan. I had heard talk of the book before the movie came out and I was intregued, but with schoolwork and drama, I never started it or saw the movie. I really forgot about it until my dad brought it home from Target. After he read it, he insisted that I do too. My dad said that it reminded him of our dog, Kozmo. Kozmo is our crazy, lovable, loyal, hyper, curious and wild one year old Coker-Bichon. I am really exited to learn about other people's expiriences with their dogs.

Poems

So much depends
On that round little cup
Surrounded in crinckley tin
With the smell of peanut butter
and the smooth chocolate surface
Although it does taste kind of stale

So much of spring depends upon
the forest
where a hint of life is returning
where green is slowly emerging
where a bird chirps and
where the wind rustles what is left of winter

Holocaust Paragraph

When people think of what happened during the Holocaust, their minds usually turn to concentration and death camps. Although the camps do play a huge role in the outcome of the Holocaust, it was not the only hardship that the Jewish people had to face. First, Hitler began taking privileges away from the Jewish community. The History Place Holocaust Timeline states that by 1938, most Jewish rights were long gone. At that point, Jews were already being deported to concentration and death camps. These people were taken (sometimes violently) from their homes, and forced to board a freight train. With days of travel, no food, and no room to even sit down on the train, several people died before the train arrived at the camp. Perhaps they were they lucky ones, for the ones who dismounted the train had no idea what terrors were to follow. Louis Bulow says that after getting off the train, germans examined each Jew. Some were told they would be getting and led to large buildings. The ‘showers’ that the prisoners were led to were in fact, large gas chambers. After undressing and given a piece of soap, the giant doors were shut, and the gas was released. Within twenty minutes everyone inside the chamber was dead. Those who had been fortunate enough to avoid the gas chambers were immediately put to work, most of them perished. According to 'Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race' website, the Nazis at the camps conducted awful medical experiments on the prisoners. This is shown in the novel 'Night' by Elizer Wiesel, Elie undergoes an operation without anesthesics "They had not put me to sleep" (Wiesel, 75). They viewed the Jewish as people who could just be disposed. One experiment that the Nazis did was they put people in the freezing cold, to first, establish how long it would take to lower the body temperature to death and second, how to best resuscitate the frozen victim. Over 6 million people died, and several were very near-death when the Americans finally came to release the prisoners from the death camps.

Holocaust Research Flow-Map

Holocaust Research

I was given the task of finding some things that happened during the Holocaust. After being in a play about the Holocaust, visiting Holocaust museums, and learning about it in school, I know that there had to be hundreds. I believe that the Holocaust truley began when Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The terror for Jewish people followed quickly. TheIt started with people destroying Jewish stores. Although it must have been terrible, no one had any idea of what was to come. That is when the Jewish community started to loose their priveledges. First, they were not allowed to own land, then they could not have health insurance, then went their right to serve in the military, finally, Hitler took pretty much all of their rights away when he wrote the Nuremberg laws. They were a number of laws that prohibited Jews from doing pretty much anything. As if that wasn't enough the Nazis demanded that any Jewish people had to register wealth and property, Jews over age 15 had to apply for identity cards from the police, which any policeman could ask for, at any time, for no reason whatsoever. THen they had all Jewish women add "Sarah" and Jewish men to add "Israel" to their names on their passports, the Nazis then forced them to wear a red J. Imagine being a Jew at this time, you could'nt work, because they had been banned from almost all kinds of work, the children were not allowed to go to school. You were forced to be relocated to Jewish houses, could not own radios, or be outside from 8 p.m. to 9 a.m. That was just the beginning. Soon, Jews began dissapearing, never to be seen again. They had been deported to concentration camps along with gypsies, black people, homosexuals and mentally disabled people, where they faced horrors beyond our imagination. After a long ride on freight trains, where there was no room to move, they arrived at the camps. There, they were either killed instantly, by being told they were getting showers, and then being put into gas chambers instead. Or forced to work until they were dead. Not only that, but I learned that the Nazis conducted several expiriments on their captives that were held in death camps like: Auchswitz, Dachau, Buchenwald and Natzweiler. The tests that the nazis conducted were inhumane and awful. They put people in the freezing cold,to find out first, to establish how long it would take to lower the body temperature to death and second how to best resuscitate the frozen victim. These people did awful, unspeakable tests on twins. I'll spare you the details, but know this, they were gruesome. Over 6 million people died, and several were very near-death when the Americans finally came to release the prisoners from the death camps. Beleive it or not, those things listed above were only a portion of what happened during the Holocaust. It was an unbelievable thing that happened, and we will never forget it.

Sources:

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/deadlymedicine/

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html

http://www.deathcamps.info/FAQ.htm

Holocaust Cause and Effect