Brits love their dogs to bits
MANILA, Philippines - Whenever I see toy dog-toting humans at malls that profess to be animal-friendly, I feel like challenging this policy of tolerance by bringing a scruffy native dog and see if it, too, would be welcome.
On one hand, it’s good that some commercial places like malls have opened up to the idea of pets strolling inside their properties. On the other hand, I hardly see anyone bringing Bantay or Muning (old household monikers for native dogs and cats) to these venues because, let’s admit it, a pony-tailed Shih Tzu and a long-haired Persian usually look more regal and refined than their local counterparts.
What Bantay and Muning need, really, is a good PR manager. But after waking up to the gruesome animal cruelty perpetuated by one Vicente Ridon and his wife Dorma, the Filipino couple arrested for using teenage girls to torture animals that were filmed and sold to “crush fetish” Internet sites, it’s clear that poor image is the least of Bantay and Muning’s problems.
What they need is an English master.
The way British care for animals is remarkable. If our askals, short for “asong kalye” (street dogs) could speak, they’d probably wish out loud that they were born to Brit masters.
This reminded me of a news footage I saw on TV years ago that showed a British tourist who was almost beside himself as he castigated a local couple for feeding dogs to their pet snake. The Brits are big on dogs and cats, something that became obvious to me during a short trip to London years ago where I nary saw an English version of askal and pusakal, short for “pusang kalye” (street cats). Instead, I saw lots of them playing in green parks and walking about the streets of London with their humans, or riding in expensive cars.
According to a poll by Angus Reid Public Opinion that compared attitudes to animals among people in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, the Brits came out to be more concerned for animals’ welfare than Americans and Canadians.
Compared to the two other nationalities, more Brits support the total ban on all types of hunting, all types of medical research on animals, all types of product research on animals, fur farming, all circuses that feature animals, and holding animals in captivity.
The poll results were released almost a year ago, but I thought it would still be relevant as I don’t think the Brits would have had a change of heart in such a short period.
Actually they did, but not in this lifetime.
According to American author Kathryn Shevelow who wrote For the Love of Animals: The Rise of the Animal Protection Movement, Britain in centuries past was particularly cruel to animals with the way they patronized atrocious bloody sports such as bull-baiting, dog-fighting and even bear-baiting done in arenas they called “bear gardens.” Then, based on Shevelow’s research, in the 17th and 18th century a motley group of pro-animal activists started what was to be the world’s first animal protection movement and slowly and painfully, deeply changed for the better the way Brits regard and care for animals.
“The rescued dogs, cats, rabbits, and horses who live with so many of us today ultimately owe their survival to British reformers who forced the law for the first time to become responsive to the plight of animals,” writes Shevelow.
Clearly, we have a lot to learn from the British when it comes to respecting animal rights. A trip to city pounds can give one an idea of how far we are from being a humane society. So many unloved Bantay and Muning suffer at the hands of callous pound people who cram them inside awful cages “willy nilly” as Brits would say. Those workers need to grow a heart.
