Yesterday I did what I told myself, years ago, I would never do again. I picked up the phone, called Animal Welfare and asked if anybody was going to adopt Star. They asked me for my number and I joined what turns out to be a queue.

I had previously picked up another stray (she turned out to be a Bison Frisee, an expensive pure-bred) which had been left tied to a tree in Marsa and yet another one Didier (who also turned out to be a pure-bred Baboon Faced Poodle) who was also abandoned, via Freddy years ago. Both gave me years of joy and warmed the cockles of my heart. I did not care for their breed: I saw they were in need and took them in. The people who had bought them had obviously thought the breed was important: Didi had even taken part in shows and had the walk they are trained to do at these places. (Incidentally, I find dog and cat shows and everything that goes in 'training' these animals as abhorrent as a circus and equally full of freaks).

For every ten animal-loving people in Malta there seems to be one who defies what the other ten think 'humanity' means. Why would anybody go through so much trouble to get rid of a dog? First bind her mouth, then all her legs, then shoot her in the head, then bury her - and it turns out later - alive? It's going through so much trouble, is it not? Moreover, we are not talking about a small dog: this is a medium-sized animal. There are, that I  can see, two ways that anybody can do this no matter what size they are: either if the dog is so complacent that it would let you tie both sets of legs without trouble...or that he drugged her before doing it.

Now as any dog best friend will tell you even the best-trained one will find it difficult to lie there prostate while you tie up their legs. Not that I have any experience of this of course but we have the most docile rottweiler in the world and after a couple of seconds of 'sleep' if we try to touch her, she tickles and jumps up usually to lick our face or something slurpy like that. So, sadly, I have to think that Star, this dog that turned out to have such a surprisingly sweet character that half the island now wants to adopt her, was drugged.

So here we go with another addition to the hypothesis: first drug your dog, then bind them, then shoot them in the head, then bury them, as it turns out, alive.

The message boards were, as can be expected, apopleptic with rage. People wanted to kill and bury this person who had done this. Now.

This was the same reaction as when, two or three years ago, somebody had cut off their dog's nose in the south of the island, an act of pure torture.

And in the meanwhile, for the second time in two years, the owner of High Society in Hamrun, is arraigned on accusations of animal cruelty. I had taken the lovely Didi (when he died I wrote about him here: do not read if you are sensitive please) for a grooming session to this man and I remember thinking how ironic it was that this Shi-Tzu breeder had called this shop High Society: it looked like a slum to me. I couldn't go back to get Didi soon enough.

My worry, with the first two cases of course as the third one does not even begin to compare, is that these people are in our midst. These two guys - if a woman did this I would be trebly worried! - have the makings of a serial killer: the calmness in carrying out torture, the 'fixing' of situations by slowly and methodically taking out a life. This was not the behaviour of a passionate person, of somebody who would be driven crazy by a dog's barking or violent behaviour. This was not 'putting a dog down' because they are too sick or old to live a comfortable life. Whoever did this needs to be locked up, not in prison, but in a mental institution.