Hi friends,
Please help to share the long post, if no one can help them, at least raise the awareness.
We have known 祥哥 (Fortune Boy) and 黑珍珠 (Black Pearl) for more than a year. They are very docile and gentle like most of the strays.
Fortune Boy actually had one buddy, but died tragically because of the illegal wild boar trap this April. And Black Pearl had one son who lost his life to a hit and run accident. They had another brown stray pal who also died because of rat poisons. So the place where they are residing and hiding is not safe, thus even after we had sterilised them early this year, we will still visit them, check on them, and provide them a decent meal once a week.
Today we went to visit Fortune Boy and Black Pearl again, a lorry stopped by, came down an old man and his daughter. The moment they got near us, the old man started blasting at us for dumping the dogs, blaming us for the noise made by other strays at night, and accusing us for feeding them everyday even though he knows nuts about us. We tried to explain Fortune Boy and Black Pearl are strays, not dumped by us, in fact we had helped sterilising them, and we have not seen other strays before and we only feed these two dogs, also we only come once a week to feed Fortune Boy and Black Pearl and always clear up after feeding them, how are we responsible for the noise most likely made by other dogs or even his own dogs at his farm?! However he just kept on blasting at us, refused to listen, and demanded us to stop coming to this public place, and his daughter even insulted us a couple of times and called the police.
The old man and his daughter kept threatening to call AVA and even claimed that all along feeding strays is a crime, we were committing a crime and wanted us to wait for police to come. We waited, not because we were afraid of them or wanted to appease them, it was because we wanted to learn and hear from the police what crime we had truly committed.
Two policemen came, one took down our statements, another took down the daughter's statements.
After the old man and the daughter left, and they may have thought we will be arrested, we asked the policemen is it a crime to feed stray cats and dogs in Singapore. One corporal said he think according to AVA we are not allowed to do so. Obviously this is not a good answer, what did he mean by "I think". We used the examples of the feeders of the stray cats around the neighbourhoods, as long as they clear after they feed, town councils will not interfere their doings, and they do not report to police to prosecute them, in such cases strayfeeding is not a crime. And we have never come across a clause clearly states strayfeeding is illegal in Singapore.
However the corporal seemed to be very bias, agreeing with what the daughter told him that we were responsible for affecting their business, saying that their crocodiles' productivity was affected by the noises made by the strays at night and they got scared. Absolutely absurd! The corporal was not being rational and clear minded, if the crocodiles are so sensitive of dogs' barking, why do the old man and his daughter themselves keeping so many dogs in their own farm?! Don't tell us all of their dogs are muted by them, and why do they need mute dogs for! And there is totally no evidence or witnesses to prove that Fortune Boy and Black Pearl are the ones barking. We asked the corporal by him calling AVA to come and cull them, will it really solve the old man's problem and appease his unreasonable complain which he claimed had haunted him for the past 16 years.
Sad to say, the corporal is definitely not an animal lover, and is obviously bias towards the businessman, he claimed that he will inform AVA no matter what. At this point, I bet you will know what will happen to Fortune Boy and Black Pearl. They will be caught and killed innocently very soon. Our main worry is that they are friendly towards strangers that they cannot fend for themselves, even when the policemen were talking to us, they just rested besides us quietly, listening. These poor dogs do not understand that they are in grave danger now just because of a pair of grumpy and unreasonable father and daughter's complain. And when asked one last time, did we commit anything against the law, if not can we move on, the corporal said we can go after copying down our NRIC's details; what a contradiction.
As much as we hope to help them, we can't. We are overstretched by other rescued dogs at the boarding kennel and fostering home, we simply don't have resources to provide long term boarding for them. We definitely understand that finding them a home or even a fostering home in such a short notice is extremely tough and difficult, especially when there are so many strays, puppies, abandoned pedigrees are in need of homes as well. We still hope to try, at least we try, there may be hope for them.
If you are unable to help, at least please share this post to raise the awareness of another poor plight of the local dogs...
Please keep them in your blessings...
[23.10.11/fb http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=267493533289384&set=a.111885465516859.6123.100000862194654&type=1&ref=nf]
5.12.11
they are now living in a nursery farm, the owner of the farm helped own them.
