As I write this, there is a live video playing in the background, reporting the death of a woman who was found with hands tied, her body burnt, in her vehicle, which had been set on fire.

Location: Lowlands, Tobago, an area often in the news of late – lots of vehicular accidents, a shooting, now this.

In the comments section of the live video, many people have asked: “What could she have done to deserve this?”

To begin with, no matter how “horrible” a person may be, no one deserves to die in this torturous manner.

Secondly, someone does not need to be “horrible” to have such a heinous act committed against them.

The most innocent individual can sometimes cross paths with the wrong person at the wrong time – someone without a conscience, someone in a dangerous mental state, someone whose mind has been distorted to unthinkable proportions by drugs, someone driven by the need for vengeance, which can be provoked by even the simplest or most innocent statement or action made. Someone raised from childhood to accept that torture and killing are normal – through examples set by elders who frequently demonstrate that abusing, torturing, poisoning, beating or chopping animals is acceptable.

We live in a culture where, increasingly, life is not respected or valued. As I always emphasise in my articles, all life, even that of what some may perceive as the “lowliest” animal, must be respected and valued.

Where can one learn this basic precept? At home? In school? On television, radio, newspapers, social media?

Perhaps all of the above...and more. Every occasion on which we as a society can genuinely illustrate the importance of and need for kindness to all living beings must be relentlessly utilised.

Some may not understand or believe in the validity of this correlation, but when a large sector of a society does not have even basic compassion for animals, it speaks volumes also of a deeper tendency not to care for or about human beings.

Someone who can harm an innocent animal is capable of harming a human being. I do not need to repeat that this has been proven in numerous studies carried out in relation to animal abuse and serious crimes (cannibalism, serial murders, etc).

I sound like a stuck record, but until TT begins to take animal abuse and neglect seriously, we can say goodbye to any hopes of this society becoming one that can be admired and emulated as being wholesome and harmonious.

I received a call recently to help rescue a puppy that was injured and hiding in some bamboo. The visitors to the island who called me had heard a dog screaming relentlessly while they relaxed on the beach. Horrified, they ran in the direction of the sound and discovered that the puppy had been beaten. Thankfully they intervened.

To cut a long story short, the puppy is currently with me. He was understandably traumatised and injured. According to the vets who checked him, his left hind leg is most likely fractured.

The puppy (Heart) is a small, skeletal creature. His only “crime” was that he had been hungry a