14 DAY TRIAL // “Sign your name across my heart” might sound pretty romantic when Michael Bolton says it, but odds are “tattoo a heart and a couple of names on your dog's shoulder while the poor animal is anesthetized” is something few will find appealing. Especially if they happen to keep animals close at heart.
Not to beat about the bush, a tattoo artist named Mistah Metro, who now works with NY Ink star Chris Torres, is now getting loads of publicity – and not the good kind – after he decided to show his love for his pet dog by putting a red heart tattoo on its right shoulder.
The Brooklyn tattoo artist's fairly peculiar way of showing his dog just how much he loves it might have gone unnoticed if it were not for the fact that, after he finished inking the pooch, Mistah Metro took some pictures of his artwork and posted one of them on Instagram.
What's more, Daily Mail tells us that the picture that made it online was accompanied by the following message: “One of the many reasons my dog is cooler than your!” Otherwise put, this tattoo artist is quite convinced that having its dog inked somehow helped make it cooler than it already was.
Needless to say, the photo and its accompanying message caused quite the turmoil, especially among animal rights activists, who were quick to label Mistah Metro's decision to tattoo his dog as inhumane and utterly cruel.
More so given the fact that, as the tattoo artist himself admitted on Instagram, he inked his dog while the latter was under anesthesia, and after a local vet had performed surgery on it in order to remove its spleen.
“She had her spleen removed yesterday and the vet let me tattoo her while she was under,” Mistah Metro wrote on the social media site in a rather boastful tone that did not sit right with lots of people.
Talking to the press, members of the ASPCA (the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) explained that, for the time being, tattooing dogs was not illegal. However, this does not mean people can go around inking pooches just because they feel that they would look better with a tattoo.
“Tattooing an animal for the vain sake of joy and entertainment of the owner without any regard for the well-being of the animal is not something the ASPCA supports,” a spokesperson for the organization said in a statement.
“We can't say a tattoo is going to do enormous damage to an animal, but we do look at whether a procedure is therapeutically necessary first – if it's not, that's not the vets goal,” added animal welfare scientist Emily Patterson-Kane with the American Veterinary Medical Association.