I am forever in favour of protecting animal rights. However, I cannot understand why we make such a fuss when circuses come to Malta because a few people decide that it is cruel for animals to perform in circuses, especially when animal cruelty is an everyday occurrence in our own country.

We live on an island where cats and dogs are tortured, protected birds are blasted out of the sky, horses are left without protection from the sun and without water, animals are found bludgeoned to death, dogs are left all day alone and are kept in unsuitable conditions, dog fighting is rampant, the list goes on and on. In any other civilised country any one of these crimes would be punishable by serving time in jail but in our country we rarely hear of any of the perpetrators being punished adequately.

However, as soon as a circus comes to Malta we write about the terrible conditions these animals have to live in and how they are forced to do tricks that go against their natural instincts and also that the training involves punishment. Now everyone has a right to his own opinion but people should be more careful and only talk about facts they are sure are true.

There are many animals the world over which are made to perform behaviours that are not part of their natural instincts, like police dogs who are trained to attack criminals on command , or to search for avalanche victims. However, I have yet to hear about someone complaining about these animals having to perform unnatural behaviours.

Another very important point that animal activists, especially in Malta, should be very careful about is when saying that the animals are forced to perform tricks and are punished in order to be trained. I can honestly say that I don't know what sort of training this particular circus is using in order to train its animals, however I can assure readers that nowadays there are modern training techniques like positive reinforcement (better known as reward training) where the animals are offered a reward for learning a correct behaviour. There are also various tools like target training and shaping which allows an animal to learn a trick or behaviour step by step.

I have personally used these techniques myself on different types of animals and can assure readers that they work 100 per cent and that no punishment is necessary to train most animals to do tricks. Any animal rights group activist worth his salt should know these facts before dissuading people from visiting these circuses or any other organisations that use animals to entertain.