This incident has been much discussed on the radio and and the newspapers in the last couple of days. I'm shocked at the amount of people who think, 'it's just an animal', 'sure we eat meat all the time'. To me the point is not that it was 'only' an animal or that we kill animals for food but the mind of a person who would feed an animal a firework and leave it in agony and somehow think that is funny? Animals that are killed for their meat are slaughtered in an humane and quick way and to try and pawn off this incident with the arguement that we eat meat is ridiculous to me. I think the more important issue here is that if a child or young person thinks that abusing and torturing an animal is funny or acceptable what kind of person will they grow up to be? Would they hesitate to abuse a person in this way? This to me is the real issue rather than the blasé attitude of 'sure it's only an animal, it hardly deserves all this attention' which was expressed by a radio presenter on a dublin talk show.