Regarding your Sept. 4 article "It's cool to be a cowboy in Brazil's 'Wild West'": How sad it is to see brazen animal abuse popularized in Brazil. Shoving electric prods into animals, twisting their necks, slamming them to the ground, and otherwise abusing them is not "heroic" in my book. The cowboys voluntarily risk injury; the animals have no such choice. This sad and sorry aspect of the Wild West should have been relegated to the pages of history long ago.

Kristie Phelps
Suffolk, Va.
Program coordinator, In Defense of Animals