[sdtPikachu]

Cripes, how the hell did this turn into Canada vs. America vs. a fiticious country where dogs don't die debate?!

From what I gather the kid just made a stupid mistake (I am of course asuming he didn't intend to kill the dog), and did what maybe 80% of 10 year olds would do; he invoked the age old excuse of "a big boy done it and ran away"; an excuse used by every single age group in existence in different forms.

Yet because an animal (even worse - a cute fluffy animal. I imagine if he'd killed a stray dog with rabies you wouldn't mind so much) is involved, emotions tend to run very high.

"Here in America, we have more important things to put on headlines."

That's true, and I imagine Canada has just as much important things to worry about too. But it's the classic media crutch; if you want a story use a cute animal. I remember that classic line from "Shallow Grave" where Ewan McGregor (the hack) says "well, you see, no pets, no human angle. Nope, I can't make a story out of that one."

I imagine that, like Britain, America and Canada also have more than their fair share of useless crappy stories to divert attention from what else is going on in the world. Stories like this one are just to pacify the public into thinking that not everything going on in the wordl will invlve human deaths etc etc.

"Now there must have been other people in that park, how could anyone just stand by and let it happen. It angers me very much."

Well there may have been people who witnessed the boy tying the dog to something, but how likely is it that they'll think about the possibility of the dog fallling off? But when the dog fell off, he could have died in seconds. Depending on how it's performed, hanging can be very quick indeed.

"Would you want to live in a dog-killing free country, or a dog-killing country?"

So far as I know there's no such thing as a dog-killing free country. Or perhaps you can show me one where the inhabitants have never killled a dog...?

"If I talked about every dog that got killed in this city I would be banned for spamming too much."

Quite. As I'm sure you're all aware dogs get killed all over the world every day. Just because this case involved a kid making a stupid mistake doesn't mean it's any more special than the rest of them.

"wait until he's 13, he'll be the bad example of teenagers that makes us all look like delinquents."
"Or maybe he'll be a normal teenager because in this case, he's just ten, he made a mistake, got scared, and lied... oh no, kids lie to cover up some stuff? Who'da thunk it!"

Quite, DsH. Why is this being made into such a big deal? Kids accidentally kill their pets every day, either through lack of foresight, stupidity or callousness. To say that every kid who does this is going to turn into a little devil/juvenile delinquent etc. etc, is a tad presumptious.

Yes, let's all pick on a kid cos he made a stupid mistake. There are those of you out there who seem to think he should have the s**t kicked out of him for it. Why stop there? Let's hang the kid himself, he deserves to die. In fact let's make a law which says that anything someone does to an animal we have to do to them in return. What a great idea. [/painfully obvious sarcsam]

I would have hoped that most of you out there would realsie that this is pretty inconsequential to everyone apart from the kid and the dog.