Kaila's+Social+Issue 

For my social issue, I chose to speak up against animal abuse. I can relate to this topic because when my family adopted Spirit into our home we noticed something was very wrong when she would flinch when we tried to touch her, and flinch away from the bathroom or hurry past it. After we took her to the vet, we discovered she was probably abused because all of her top teeth in her mouth are dead; the vet said she had probably been hit with something hard on her mouth. Animal abuse is so terrible and it hurts me to think about it.

My plan for the social issue

FINAL: I chose the theme of animal abuse for my social issue project, because I can relate to it. For Christmas a few years ago, we adopted Spirit, a Siberian husky from the Ionia animal shelter. When we took her into the vet for a check up, we found out she had been abused, because her x-ray showed that all of the teeth on the top jaw were dead, and she had to have been hit hard for them to become that way. There were other smaller things that led us to believe she had, and I was so angry that anyone could do something so terrible. The process on my project was a slightly rough and unknown one, because I had all this emotion on the subject, but an unknown way to channel it into something that would give people the notice it needed. I started out with a box I made into a trifold, and painted it black. Using red paint, I painted my hand and hit the cardboard, making it look like a slap, and added words and pictures, which I used watercolor to highlight things in the pictures. A problem I had with my project is that my figure had fallen apart, slightly, and my idea to have my pets with red paint on their paws walk across the background ended up with red paint all over the floors in my house. I ended up trying to recreate the paw prints, and gluing the figure back together. Deciding on the background and the information and ways I had to use to reach out and get my point across was a little difficult, but I believe I did a good job. I’m very proud of my project and the way it turned out. It isn’t violent to where you’d feel sick looking at it, but it’s got enough realism in it to get the point across that just hitting or kicking an animal isn’t the only abuse out there. I feel it gets the point across. The figure doesn’t work very well, because it isn’t the color I thought it’d be. It also fell apart and if I had enough time, I’d do it again and make it better. If I could I’d change the figure and make it better, and color it differently.