(Phillipines) Fighting for the furries

[Guest guest]

Fighting for the furries

Manila Times

Sunday, July 02, 2006

By Anna Nieves H. Cabrera, Board member,

The Philippine Animal Welfare Society

 

“BANTAY.” It’s the usual name for dogs in the Philippines, as in “Fido” for

man’s best friend in the United States. Roughly translated, the Filipino

word “bantay” means, “guard” or “sentinel,” which has essentially been the

central role of dogs in local households for a very, very long time. Only

recently have some of us caught on the Western idea of dogs as animals that

need to be walked and played with—like a regular member of the family.

 

Dogs that are trained are referred to as “magaling” (amazing), and often

considered an oddity in the country. They are showpieces to visiting

friends, as dogs that can “sit” or “shake hands.”

 

The more common scenario of owning these four-legged creatures is the

“outside dogs.” You see them stationed just outside the gates of houses.

They are on the sidewalks, two sometimes, and technically strays. But once

the city pound personnel make their rounds to catch these dogs, out would

come the dog owners to bark, “Hey, don’t catch that dog. It’s not a stray;

it’s mine!”

 

“Then, why is it outside, sir?” would be the natural question from the city

pound folk. The reply would be the feeble excuse that the dog had just

“escaped,” when truth be told, the dog had never even been inside the yard,

much less the family home.

 

Dogs—especially native dogs (mongrels or Filipino dogs)—are not kept in the

average Filipino home. Now, if the dog is pure-breed and expensive (a

shih-tzu, sharpei, pug, etc.), then the owner will allow it to stay inside

the house.

 

There is a reason why the colloquial term for a native mongrel is “askal.”

It is the combination of the words “aso[ng] [dog]” and “kalye [street].”

 

Native dogs are commonly seen outside the home and unsupervised. And though

they do have owners (who give them leftovers and the occasional trip to the

barangay clinic for rabies shots), they are literally “street dogs.” Half

stray and half wild, these dogs sleep faithfully in front of the gate of the

house and still wag their tails when the master comes home.

 

To have askals in the earlier days was acceptable, when most people still

lived in provinces. There were no fences or yards to speak of so the family

dog roamed freely alongside the livestock (pigs and chickens, usually).

Unfortunately, this provincial practice of dog ownership carried on in the

urbanized areas, which gave way to the problem of askals. Because of the

prevalence of street dogs, pedestrians would fear traversing sidewalks. In

subdivisions, joggers with “sticks” are a common sight, so they could shoo

away the askals.

 

But what is really sad about the situation is the obvious discrimination on

askals. If a dog is good looking, it is presumed to come from a particular

breed; the rest are askals. It is the purebred dogs that are fed commercial

dry dog food and the native dogs leftovers. At the PAWS (Philippine Animal

Welfare Society) Animal Shelter (PARC), the most common cases of abandonment

are made by dog owners who want to make space for say, a Labrador, or

another purebred. They must “get rid” of the native dog.

 

Those who choose to remain their askal keep them tied up for eternity, as

some sort of burglar alarm system. This dog is none the luckier for it is

left exposed to the summer sun and rains. To hope for an occasional pat on

the head from the master would be too much. The only attention the dog gets

is perhaps a kick or a slipper thrown at it when it barks at another passing

askal. Because of boredom, he chews on his leash or chain to the end of his

days.

 

Breaking the cycle

 

How to bring about changes in dog ownership practices was the impetus for

the establishment of the pioneer animal welfare group PAWS. Led by Nita

Hontiveros-Lichauco, the organization came to be in 1986. With less than 10

active members who held meetings at Lichauco’s dinner table back then, PAWS

started out with modest projects such as rescuing injured kittens and

maltreated dogs from the streets.

 

The group’s mission, then and now, is to make people realize the value of

native dogs; that they matter too. They veer away from the term askal for

the very reason that dogs should not be left on the streets. For when dogs

become street dogs, they do not receive proper care, pose health hazards to

the community and become easy targets of cruel people. PAWS’ goals,

therefore, are to do away with the notion of keeping dogs in the yards; to

spread the message that dogs need companionship and interaction; and to

introduce the concept of spaying or neutering pets.

 

In 1998 Oscar Lei, the first PAWS volunteer who completed a scholarship from

the Humane Society of the United States and interned at the Houston SPCA,

excitedly told his co-members, “I know how we can make people more open to

the idea of adopting pets we have rescued. We will ‘repackage’ them!”

 

He elaborated that in the United States, animal shelters rehabilitated

abandoned animals, spayed/neutered them and found them potential new homes

through “adoptive parents,” who would pay an “adoption fee” for the

opportunity to give these animals a good life.

 

Not all PAWS officers agreed with Lei’s proposal, though. Volunteers who

broke away from the group said that funds for building such a center would

be put into better use by financing more humane education and spay-neuter

projects.

 

Those who stayed on and agreed with the proposal went on to build the PAWS

Animal Rehabilitation or PARC in 1999, after the passage of the Animal

Welfare Act (1998). By year 2000 the structure was completed and the group

took in the first set of “adoptable” dogs from the Marikina City Pound, in

an effort to jump-start its adoption program.

 

For the first few years, it appeared that the doomsayers were right. What

had they been thinking? People said that stray dogs were a “dime a dozen.”

Who would pay an adoption fee to take in a native dog?

 

But even then, volunteers working in newspapers floated the existence of the

animal shelter and its goals to editors. It was the newspaper columnist Neal

Cruz who launched the first public appeal of adoption at the shelter, so as

to be “at peace with one’s conscience.”

 

Slowly, by word of mouth, through posters, adoption rates began to pick up,

which became opportunities to educate people on spay-neuter and responsible

pet ownership.

 

RP’s first animal anticruelty law

 

When the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) was passed on February 11, 1998, there was

probably no other person happier than Nita Hontiveros-Lichauco, PAWS’

president.

 

For 14 years, she lobbied for the law by enlisting the help of volunteers.

These were lawyers and pet lovers who had no legal background, who

tirelessly researched on anticruelty animal laws from developed countries.

 

Pivotal to the passage of AWA in Congress was former Rep. Escudero (father

of Rep. Chiz Escudero), former senators Letty Ramos-Shahani and Orly

Mercado.)

 

Before AWA, the only other law that protected animals in the Philippines was

the Metro Manila Ordinance 82-02, a law that banned the slaughter of dogs

for their meat and the dog meat trade, only within Metro Manila. Lichauco

witnessed how the police would chase dog meat traders, whose trucks were

loaded with tied-up dogs, obviously bound for slaughterhouse, only to give

up the chase at the boundary of Metro Manila. Her frustration strengthened

only her resolve: She vowed to put every inch of her energy toward lobbying

for a national law that would make animal cruelty a crime.

 

“Lobbying would have been much easier if animals could vote,” Lichauco

observed. Animals were clearly at the bottom of the barrel when it came to

the government priorities. Since reorganizing PAWS in 1986, Lichauco bore

the brunt of being called “eccentric” by the many who did not understand her

cause.

 

Even the media coverage on animal issues was unheard of back then. Only the

blessing of pet dogs at the Mount Carmel Church in New Manila to celebrate

of the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi—an event that Lichauco started in

1995—would be highlighted in newspapers on television. And that was but once

a year.

 

But although animal matters had begun to look up with the passage of the

law, little did animal welfare advocates know it was simply marked the

beginning of an uphill battle.

 

PAWS today sits as one of the 14 members of the Committee on Animal Welfare

(CAW), a body that was subsequently created to help the government draft the

rules and regulations for the enactment of the AWA. The CAW members are

themselves volunteers, while its affiliate the Bureau of Animal

Industry-Animal Welfare Division has hardly a budget to speak off for

information dissemination.

 

Since its inception in 1998, CAW has managed to create 15 Administrative

Orders to govern how animals are kept or treated in various sectors—from

businesses like pet shops, all the way to the treatment and transport of

animals.

 

On the issue of animal cruelty, prosecution of animal offenders has been

difficult to implement because of the Filipino’s natural aversion to

long-drawn court proceedings, besides the fact that advocates face ridicule

for testifying on something that is still deemed trivial—the death and

torture of a neighbor’s pet dog or cat.

 

Advocates lament that there is a huge disparity between the way animals are

treated in more developed countries. The first anticruelty law in the United

States was penned in 1829, while the British had their first anticruelty law

in 1822, with Dick Martin’s “Act to Prevent Cruel and Improper Treatment of

Cattle.”

 

High hopes

 

Animal rights still have a long way to go in the Philippines, but the seeds

have already been planted. The visibility of animal welfare-related news and

the mushrooming of groups that fight for the rights of animals are

testimonies to this development.

 

The day that the majority fully grasps the idea that the fight for animals

is not a matter of prioritizing animals over people, but purely a concept

that all living beings are connected, is what PAWS and its partners look

forward to. The realization that we are, in effect, taking care of ourselves

when we take care of the animals around us. That violence and cruelty

inflicted on animals precipitate and encourage acts of violence on human

beings.

 

Until then, animal welfare advocates and their sympathizers will continue

their fight for the furries.

 

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