I suspect it comes from the fact that the dogs aren't thinking creatures and don't have the choice of calling the cops or a lawyer or leaving to go somewhere else. I know that many women feel they also don't have those choices, but in fact, they do.

Wife beating is a despicable behaviour too, but there is still the sense that the dogs didn't choose the life they have, while humans did. Maybe it was a rotten choice and now they feel stuck but there was that initial choice that dogs simply don't have.

It's similar to the fact, at least I think it's a fact, that the whipping of a slave who has no recourse to justice is seen as a more horrendous crime than the whipping of a free person who does have some sort of recourse.

Hi, Alan,

I understand where you're coming from - and these are complicated issues.

I agree that animal abuse is a sick and cowardly crime.

But on the issue of 'recourse' of those who are 'free', I have a different view. Many wives are physically abused by their husbands, but choose not to do anything because of their children. My mother-in-law was physically abused by her husband, but held it in for years because of her kids. Yes, you could argue that she made a "choice", but the alternatives were rough. So the idea of "freedom of choice" is more marginalized than we might realize.

Even if a husband just hits a wife once, the wife is going to live in fear (perhaps forever) that her husband might someday snap and do something worse. My wife had to sit and watch her mother get hit, and to this day, any time I even raise my voice a notch, I can see the fear in her eyes.

So I put men who beat their wives in the same general category as Vick. I'm not the spokesperson for women's organizations, but I know enough that once a woman has been physically beaten, it's a fear that may be there for a very long time.