Dog tossed off Sunset Cliffs

The photos were posted at approximately 7:40 p.m. Saturday evening (September 17) on the Ocean Beach Facebook group page — well, the screen shot of the photo was posted, due to the original photo being deleted shortly after posting.

“It was a natural instinct. I knew she was going to delete it and she did seconds after I got the shot,” Moyita said after posting the screenshot.

It’s obvious why the pic was deleted. No one wants to see a dog being tossed off Sunset Cliffs…but there is another side to this story: the dog liked it.

The original poster of the photos — not the dog's owner — Anna, said that the dog “is fine and knew exactly what she's doing” and she “did it over and over...she loved it.” Most people weren’t too happy about the dog being thrown into the ocean and things heated up quickly.

The initial reaction called for reporting the dog-tossers to authorities for animal cruelty. Anna took a hit via comments and attempted to quell the mob.

“Yes it was perfectly safe-giving it distance is even safer but most people don't understand that or these waters…I didn’t think it was funny. I spent my childhood jumping into these waters, and thought it was sweet how much fun the dog was having…and these people were not at all being cruel,” she wrote. “[T]he family knew what they where doing she wasn't in any danger.... She was having a blast jumping off the rock and running back over and over. If I had taken a video, the responses would have been different...but this was a very happy dog, in no distress whatsoever."

By all accounts, the dog is fine.

According to California Animal Abuse & Cruelty Laws — specifically, Penal Code 597: The phrases "animal abuse" and "animal cruelty" cover a broad range of conduct...some that is obviously criminal in nature, some that is more obscure. Simply put, the crime of animal abuse takes place whenever an animal is the victim of cruel treatment or neglect.

If you do a simple “dogs jumping off a cliff ” search on YouTube, the results yield pages and pages of videos of happy dogs enthusiastically leaping from cliffs into the water below.