I'm an animal lover, in fact, I love animals more than I love most humans, but I have to admit that there is no way in hell that I would open a skip to find out what's moving inside it.

Even though I know that noises emerging from a skip are most likely to be coming from an animal trapped inside, I would automatically assume that the culprit is a rat having a great party. I'd therefore run away so fast that my heart rate monitor would most likely short circuit.

Surely I'd have nightmares about that rat's fate in the hands of a savage skip collector, but if it were me jogging that route, Gaia, the boxer, would never had been found.

For those of you who missed the disgusting, heart wrenching and exasperating story about Gaia, here it is in gist: according to news reports, a jogger who until now has remained unnamed, was passing by a skip and heard movements coming from inside it. Not only did he stop, he opened the skip and searched thoroughly through the rubbish. He then spotted some movement in a closed black garbage bag, and when he opened it he found a boxer fighting for her life, suffocating. Unfortunately, despite all efforts from The Animal Welfare Department and The Animal Ambulance and Centru San Frangisk, the dog, did not make it.

After I stopped cursing and ripping my hair out in anger, and after I Facebooked what I would consider to be fair punishment if the person who did this ever gets caught (not printable here I'm afraid), I realised that if the dog was still alive when it was found, then it couldn't have been there too long.

I'm no expert, but I can't imagine anything or anyone surviving for more than a few minutes inside a sealed plastic bag, so I'm assuming that whoever did this to Gaia was probably still around, in the vicinities, or had just sped off in a car.

I just hope that the police turned up and looked for clues, took finger prints off the skip and the plastic bag, snooped around for witnesses, and did all that they would do had this been a child or a human body. And, at the cost of getting lashed with venomous comments, I also hope that they leave no stone unturned which includes eliminating the jogger from their suspects' list.

As expected, soon after the story emerged, the government jumped at the opportunity of some good public relations, and said that this year it introduced the obligation to have all dogs micro-chipped in order to make a dog's owner easily identifiable.

As much as I agree with this law, I'm afraid that someone capable of such brutality will have no qualms about removing and destroying a micro-chip in the most unthinkable way. In addition, what stops a dog owner from reporting his dog missing only for it to turn up suffocating in a garbage bag a few days later? Whom would we blame then?

The truth is that micro-chipping is most useful for good pet owners, those who sincerely care for their pets and don't want to lose them. What these monsters need on the other hand, are harsh penalties, severe punishments, and five minutes in a room with animal lovers like me.