A Man’s Best Friend

We often hear that a dog is a man’s best friend. Dogs are particularly loyal and faithful to their masters; they are also known for being very helpful to people who are impaired in some way or another, usually visually impaired. They are often adopted as pets to guard over the house, and some people use dogs for hunting. Some have dogs for company, and they certainly know how to have fun with their owners.

I am a dog-lover myself, and I love my dog, Rambo, very much. Although very playful, it cheers me up very much every time I come home from Kuala Lumpur or from university when he would give me a very excited welcome, jumping and pouncing onto me impatiently – his tail wagging till you couldn’t really see it. My neighbours find my dog very affectionate and they have somehow attached a part of them to him, too. Rambo doesn’t simply bark; it only does when there are strangers at night lurking around from a corner of a house. This has even earned him some respect from the inspector of police who is also my neighbour. He remarked, “You have such a good dog. When he barks at night I would immediately look out from the window because that would mean that there is somebody around the neighbourhood at such a late hour of the night, who is often up to no good.”

And while my dog enjoys quite a good life at home, a rather candid conversation between my parents and I struck a sympathetic chord in me. When the bitch gave birth to a pack of eight puppies near my house, all the three male puppies were adopted, leaving only the female puppies (one of the male puppies was Rambo). However, as the remaining puppies were females and leaving them on the roadside would not only mean disaster in the future, it was quite pitiful to imagine them to be stray dogs while their brothers are living happily in a home. Therefore, my mother decided to take the puppies and their mother to the Ipoh SPCA.

At the SPCA, the person-in-charge was quite reluctant to accept the dogs as she claimed that there were too many in the centre. However, my mother retorted that she had travelled far from home to the centre and actually bothered to bring the stray dogs there because of an advertisement which she saw in the newspapers. Eventually, she was allowed to leave the dogs there, and donated some money to the centre.

Two weeks later, my parents went back to the centre for a visit and found that the dogs have been well taken care of. In fact, some of the puppies have already been adopted. But there were still so many of them there.

It is, in my opinion, quite unfair to leave the dogs to the SPCA and expect them to take care of them. Sure enough, the SPCA has taken a responsibility to ensure that the cats and dogs that are sent there are protected from any form of abuse. However, it is a non-profitable, non-governmental organisation. And from my mother told me, it’s often the veterinarians who give out donations or sponsorships to the SPCA so that it could continue on with its mission.

It is definitely not cheap to maintain the well-being of the animals in the SPCA, and quantity is definitely a problem. With people only aiming to adopt puppies, those adult dogs in the centre are usually left to eventually die of old age there, without an owner.

It actually surprises me that I could hardly see any advertisement from the SPCA encouraging people to adopt a pet there. And its location which is quite far away from the Ipoh city does not make things any better, too.

But my point is that they have been working so hard without help from the state government or the federal government. After all, have you heard of any budget allocations for these SPCA organisations?

The dogs in the SPCA would love to have an owner, too. They would like to have a nice, comfortable permanent home to live in. The SPCA is definitely not the place for them to spend the rest of their lives.

It’s rather unfortunate that not many people from Ipoh are actually aware of the existence of the SPCA and that they can adopt dogs from there. Many would go to veterinarians or pet shops to get their dogs, and they actually have to pay to buy the dogs whereas the dogs in the SPCA are open for adoption, for free (if I am not wrong).

Still, I would be happy to know that the dogs have been adopted provided that they are being treated well by their owners. It angers me to learn that there are some of my neighbours who want to have dogs but are entirely unfit to be dog owners. In fact, if they had been in the United States, I would have lodged a police report for alleged animal abuse. Some owners do not bother to feed their dogs well and let them loose outside as much as they like. Some owners would actually beat the dogs, in the name of discipline, to the extent that the dogs actually die! While I agree that sometimes the stick must be used to discipline the dogs, I certainly do not approve of excessive punishment to the extent that the dogs cry out for help and eventually die from such a torturous ordeal. I call that morbid.

(To the Americans or individuals who do not condone beating or caning as a form of disciplining children or pets, Malaysians generally believe that if you spare the rod, you’ll spoil the child. I can proudly say that I am who I am today simply because I have been exposed to the stick, and my dog is a very disciplined dog simply because my father had administered a few beatings for his mischief. While some believe that the carrot is better than the stick, we believe otherwise and this system has worked for us for so many years. Therefore, don’t come around and tell us that we’re cruel for disciplining children or pets by caning them. You are entitled to your opinion and we are entitled to ours, and we don’t find your carrot to be that superior to our stick. But we know to what extent should be use the stick, and we do reward those who are good.)

There was a case where a family was given a Labrador puppy. Being a growing puppy, biting shoes was its nature and the man of the family got angry. Thus, he administered a hard beating consistently to the extent that the puppy was crying for help constantly. The next thing that my mother knew was that she received news of the puppy being dead. It wrenched my heart to learn about that and my heart (though involuntarily) started cursing the deed. After all, pets have the right to live and right to live a dignified life, too. If you want a pet, make sure you know your responsibilities to it and treat it well. Otherwise, you are unfit to have a pet.