It's the part about chaining them to rocks and letting them freeze to death which I don't like. Someone who takes decent care of their animals would not allow that situation to occur in the first place. How they dispose of the dogs after allowing them to die at home is not really the issue. We aren't talking about the middle of a sled ride, or a death by hazard or necessity. The definition of cruelty, if you don't understand that, is that this creature is under your control, serving you, and the minimum you can do is to respect it. If you don't, then you disrespect life. And if you disrespect life then you disrespect your own.
Yes, we kill animals for food or for fur. But disrespecting them is a completely different, very ugly and disgusting thing. Because we are like them.
One mark of a psychopath, btw, is cruelty to animals..And the reason is not simply a lack of empathy. It's a desire to do to other humans what you can do to animals. What you're missing is the fact that this can be done to you. You can be skinned alive, for example, or vivisected. You could be left to die somewhere frozen. No one would even care for your corpse. They'd just chuck you off a cliff.
For normal human beings, hearing things like that make them empathize with themselves. Therefore they don't want to inflict torment on anything else.
You're new here and maybe you're a psychopath. But I'm wasting my time trying to explain something anyway. What defines "cruelty" is not about life and death. It's about respect for the living and the dead, and essentially respect for yourself as a fellow animal.