From baltimoresun.com - Mutts:

It's an email that is raising the ire of animal lovers around the world: A Costa Rican artist picked a starving dog off the streets of Managua, Nicaragua, then used him as part of an art exhibit that allowed him to continue starving.

According to the email, the dog -- chained in the shadow of the words "You are what you read," spelled out in dog food -- died a day into the exhibit.

The artist, Guillermo Vargas, also known as Habacuc, said the purpose of the exhibit, in part, was to bring attention to the fact that, in some countries, tens of thousands of stray dogs die in the streets, with no one paying them a second thought.

"Now, if you publicly display one of these starving creatures, such as the case with Nativity, it creates a backlash that brings out a big of hypocrisy in all of us," one blog quoted him as saying. "Nativity was a very sick creature and would have died in the streets anyway."

read more ...