I am a dog person.

I grew up with a dog as a pet, and as an adult had two of my own. I spoiled my two dogs, especially Oscar, the second one, who would travel with me on long car rides and when I drove from Oklahoma City to Boston at Christmas. After he died at 15, some of his ashes were spread in the park in my OKC neighborhood, Mesta Park, where we walked daily, some remained in the wooden box they came in from the vet’s that sits on a curio shelf in my apartment, and the remainder are in a small urn on my car’s dashboard so Oscar can continue to go for rides in the car.

I usually greet a dog before I do the person walking it, and I sympathize with those poor dogs forced into embarrassing Halloween costumes against their will for the amusement of their owners.

I cringe and become angry with those who treat their dogs as things with a cruelty no dog deserves.

I was happy when President Trump recently signed the bipartisan bill,  Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act, or the PACT Act, that makes animal cruelty a federal crime, and which bans  abusive behavior including crushing, burning, drowning, suffocating, impaling and other bodily injury toward any non-human mammals, birds, reptiles or amphibians.

Violators of the Act face criminal penalties of a fine, a prison term of up to seven years, or both.

There are two types of animal cruelty which can be categorized as active, animals are intentionally tortured, and passive, unintentional cruelty resulting from neglect. Examples would include the failure to provide an animal with the most basic of requirements of food, water, shelter and medical care, and inflicting physical harm or injury.

Someone who is violent towards animals may also be violent towards family members or others, and cruelty can escalate into violence beyond animals. Because of this, many states require perpetrators to undergo psychological evaluation and counseling.

Although the exact laws on animal cruelty have varied from state to state, PACT brings them under one umbrella.

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Interestingly, the first anti-cruelty laws were enacted on behalf of animals, not children, and the existence of those laws was used as justification for enacting laws to protect children.

Henry Burgh, who had established the first animal abuse association in the United States, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, was approached by Etta Angell Wheeler, a Methodist, missionary, about a child who was daily beaten by her step-mother and locked in a closet in a tenement house in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York City.

Burgh’s response was,

 “The child is an animal, if there is no justice for it as a human being, it shall at least have the rights of the stray cur in the street. It shall not be abused.”

The courts removed the child from the home, the step-mother received a year in jail, And in 1874 the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the first such child abuse prevention society in the world, was formed.

Perhaps history will repeat itself, and, now that animal cruelty is a felony under federal law, recognizing that a child arriving at the border “is an animal, if there is no justice for it as a human being, it shall at least have the rights of the stray cur in the street. It shall not be abused”, those that are there will be treated humanely, receiving the most basic requirements of food, water, shelter and medical care in livable conditions with parental contract, and actions taken that intentionally mistreat or unintentionally result from neglect will be properly reviewed and addressed.

Trump once, when speaking of those arriving at the border, declared,

“These aren’t people. These are animals.”

So now with the PACT Act and history, the conditions at the border, when it comes to children, will be improved.