The Way I See It.....: Bukit Mertajam

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Rants on Rabies - Stray Dog Killing Issue in Penang

Unless you're staying in a small cabin in the middle of nowhere, you'd probably know what is happening now in Penang.

Lemme summarise.

Rabies cases in Penang (other cases in Kedah and Perlis)
Government declare killing of stray dogs
Dog loving people pissed
Internet war on stray dogs vs human rights (even to the extend of playing politics)

That's about it.

My two cents?

Well, I tried to look from both sides of the situation, reading posts and comments from both pov.

Sad to say, I can't see any solid points for those opposing the killing of strays.

No Killing Stray People Say

Pets have rights too
There's other ways to deal with this
Gov being cruel to animals
NGOs had pooled a big sum of money for vaccines
There's already no cases in Penang

Killing Stray People Say

Stray life vs human life
It's to protect human and home pets
No funding, budget, or enough TIME to vaccine strays
Vaccines in shortage, not even enough for home pets
Better safe than sorry

Looking back at previous epidermic of the Swine Flu or Bird Flu etc, there are not as much opposition as compared to dogs.

I'd say only business owners like those with pig or chicken farms voiced out.

Even with that, masses after masses of poultry are killed.

This proved 2 things.

One, Penangnites have great heart for dog loving, and I respect that (I love dogs too).

Two, they don't care enough or aren't educated enough to make any opposition.

(Aaaaand, social media was not as popular back then as compared to now)

On a separate but related case, I saw a video the other day where a female dog owner holding her pet was which was struck by Rabies.

It was hard to watch...

The dog was totally out of control - mad, convulsion, twitches, gnarling and salivating everywhere, not to mention trying to bite the owner, pooping and peeing and just plain aggressive.

At first, I was very convinced by the video title saying that this owner is very kind to her dog, standing by it when it needed her most.

BUT, after scrolling through comments, one comment from a vet actually appealed to me.

The vet was a UK grad, saying that actually, this is not the best way to "help" the dog, instead, it is putting the owner in danger (as the saliva might infect her too)

The best way, according to the professional, is to put the dog in a dark confinement / room, tend to it only if there's protective gear on you.

And I actually did a quick search on Google to check for the validity of the saying.

Huh... That totally put things in a different perspective.

Sometimes, it's easy to get carried away by the touching or warmhearted people's words.
They called it the Grapevine effect (people judging or posting based on what somebody else had said)

While I do agree that they are entitled to their POV, I think the government is only trying to do what's best, financial and time wise.

Many of these 'posts' and 'comments' are plain emotional, without proper reasoning, without proper education / research, and just downright rude.

However, if NGOs are trying their best to stop the killing, I do hope they can save as much strays as their ability permits, THEN proceed with the next step of finding suitable owners who are willing to take them into good and healthy homes.

Or else, that would be another new problem in their end.

But I like to add, opinions are just opinions, like mine, they are not facts.