Dogs, Without Homes

Most of the neighbors around my dad’s house own either one or two dogs or more. As we have the privileged of owning dog(s), we also expect the dogs to bark, amidst day or night. I used to kid with my sister that the dogs have their private orchestra at night. I swear, my dog, Brownie or Nie-nie sings the whole night. Even though, I will be sleep deprived the next day, nevertheless, I am glad that she is a good watchdog. She barks whenever she sees a stranger. I have another pet dog, Coco, who is playful at heart and flirty when he meets girls. On the contrary, Nie-nie gets all excited when she sees boys. My mom always says how lucky these two dogs are, because outside of our house compound and around our area, there are also a lot of stray dogs. Dogs, without homes.

If you hang around a little more, walk down two streets, behind my house, near the bridge, you will see a lot of stray dogs, all looking unpleasantly dirty, contaminated with infecting germs, having unattractive thinness that beats Gucci models, and crestfallen eyes. They are supposed to be man’s best friend, but for hundreds of thousands of dogs in Malaysia and elsewhere, to them, their existing condition is nothing, compare to the betrayal from their owners.

These sights always bring tears to my eyes and I will always try my best to divert my eyes to other more pleasant things. However, their existence has forced me to rethink about the root of their problem. At the end of the day, I realized that the biggest problem lay not on the dogs, but the owners – the Man and the Woman.

Without further acknowledging the options for the dog, both the Man and the Woman will abandon their dogs when they realize that the dog (or other animals) gets to expensive to be taken care of, in terms of medication, food and etc. Secondly, when they do abandon the dogs to the streets, the Man and the Woman do not sterilize the dog, subsequently allowing the dog to breed, leaving the society with out-of-control dog population. Thirdly, due to the carelessness of the Man and Woman, their dog escaped from their sight, and never return to them, thus, increasing the dog’s chances of contributing to the out-of-control dog population. I guess the man and the woman did not realize that leaving the dog to fend for itself, is a very selfish choice. The dog will be scared, lonely and in a poor state of health. What were the Man and Women thinking?

Stray dogs are not the only problem around my area. It is a big problem in every urban city. If you are an animal lover and have a sense for justice, your heart will be aching when you realize that how many stray dogs (and other animals) are being caged for the Olympics preparation in Beijing. Caging them and providing them with food, is considerably kind of the government officials. However, for the reason of saving money, the officials caged the dogs; abandon them in rural areas, without nourishing them, leaving them to their slow antagonizing deaths. Unable to survive the cruelty that gnaws them at them, one by one, the dogs die every single day.

We, the human beings always boast of our intelligence, beating the dolphins and chimpanzees. However, when it comes to cruelty, none of the mammals beat our initiatives of being vicious, sadistic, merciless, brutal and barbarous. Seriously, there is nothing to be boast about.