today i went down to a shelter a pasir ris.
made me think a whole lot more.
as the man showed us around, we passed by rows and rows of dogs.
he said that these were also shelters but with little or no manpower to maintain.
people just rescued the dogs and rented the place to house the dogs.
i have never seen so many strays in one place.
as i walked along the aisle, the dogs who bothered to say hi would bark and wag their tails.
and those who said 'fuck out of my(and twenty others') territory would growl.
when we got to the enclosure where mdm wong's dogs were housed, i felt relieved.
partly because being a paranoid, i was damn scared that the dogs in the other 'shelters' would be able to leap over the fencing successfully and eat me up.
the man said that their dogs are all very friendly.
which is true HAHA.
however, like the first time i went to the spca, i was quite wary of them.
dogs are like us. they all have different personalities.
for me, it is similar to meeting new people and making new friends; it will take me some time to warm up to them.
i was fortunate enough to witness this lab being taken home by the woman who adopted her.
when she saw her new owner she wagged her tail furiously.
she wags her tail when she meets strangers too, but this time, you can see happiness oozing out of her.
it's like "i'm going to a real home now. YIPPEEEEEEEEEEE".
HAHA

i felt worst when i saw the dogs in the other shelters.
twenty or thirty of them in an area the size of a tennis court.
most were just lying around.
you can see their nonchalance, but yet you feel their misery.
you feel like shit because when you look at all of them from behind those metal bars, your heart sinks because you know that this is going to be their forever home.
and yet if they are released to roam as strays, they face the risk of culling.
if i were a dog,
would i rather live as a stray with the possibility of meeting death at every corner i turn into
or would i want to live in a shelter all my life ?

i also crossed the boundary that separates light from dark.
the very first row of the second area was filled with pedigree puppies in glass cages.
they belonged to a pet shop and would be bought eventually.
then, right behind them were the rows and rows of enclosures filled with mongrels.
they consisted of those who would wait till the day they die and those who gave up waiting.

went back to the first area where i spent my remaining three hours helping the owner to prepare dinner, playing football with the show dawg and cleaning the place.

yup that's all, ok not all of it.