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This is a photo of an elephant I saw at the San Antonio Zoo in January 2008. We stood there for nearly twenty minutes watching the elephant go back and forth, raising his right hoof, and picking up the stick with his trunk. Parents told their children he was a dancing elephant, and they laughed and took photos of him. I knew that he was probably an old circus elephant, but I didn’t realize the abuse he went through. No wonder, even when he was safe, he continued his circus routine. The fear of punishment controlled all of his actions.

This is why I’m surprised Ginger was able to bounce back from her abuse so easily and quickly. “The blood from my tongue coloured the froth that kept flying from my lips, as I chafed and fretted at the bits and rein.”³

She tells Black Beauty that her master had no care for her. None of her masters did until she arrived to Birtwick Park. How could years of abuse not mentally damage Ginger as it did to the elephants? Although James and John were kind to her, was that enough to reverse the effects? It seems highly unlikely that a kind word would be able to mend years of neglect. People go through years of therapy to over come equally scarring cruelty.

Many of these training abuses are hidden. The end justifies the means, right? But as James’ teacher says, “cruelty was the devil’s own trade mark, and if we saw any one who took pleasure in cruelty, we might know who he belonged to, for the devil was a murderer from the beginning, and a tormentor to the end.”⁴

So if more people knew of the exploitation of animals, would they want to stop it? Or would they continue because it’s “fashionable?”