Article: Of dogs and dolls

Friday May 15, 2009

NOT TODAY
BY SUJESH PAVITHRAN

There must be better ways to solve the issue of stray dogs than dumping them on an island.

TOURIST venues need all the publicity they can get, one would imagine. However, residents of Pulau Ketam must be somewhat peeved at the excessive attention they've been getting in recent months – first, it was the dolls, and then, it was the dogs.

Sometime in March, housewives there were up in arms over the influx of what they claimed were "China dolls" on the island – ladies from China, peddling the oldest trade of them all, and enticing husbands away from families. There's ostensibly little or no excitement for the folks of this fishing village, so dolled-up women from abroad were bound to create ripples.

However, the media got wind of the story, and the cops did their rounds to disprove the presence of China dolls on the island. The dolls, obviously, had flown the coop by then.

China dolls, though, didn't quite match up to the furore raised worldwide when it was found that islanders were dumping stray dogs by the hundreds in mangrove swamps located on two neighbouring islands.

The islanders, despairing of the stray dog population in their vicinity, reckoned the mutts would find a way to survive on a swampy island, sans food or fresh water.

Some dogs died, others fed on their carcasses and lived; accounts by rescuers also told of mutts gazing forlornly in the direction of Pulau Ketam.

It all made for a very tragic situation, and the question that begs to be asked is this – how did we end up with such an uncontrolled population of stray dogs?

Some people are initially thrilled at the idea of having pets but, once the novelty has worn off, abandon them in places far away from home. Now, do this to a cat, and he'll find his way home with single-minded precision, over a few weeks or months, and turn up on your doorstep with a dead mouse.

Dogs get distracted easily and are too trusting of humans, so they wander around, waiting for their rightful owners to return and pick them up.

Some find better homes – I've had more than a couple of friends who have taken in friendly strays that obviously used to belong to someone, and were either lost or abandoned. Other unfortunate ones stay strays; and strays beget strays, and over the years, this has just grown and grown.

Dogs get a bad rep here, I'm inclined to believe. Complain to the local council about stray mutts and the dog-catchers descend on your neighbourhood, round up every pooch they spy and send them to the pound for that inevitable cruel end.

Tell them about the dozens of cats rummaging through your garbage and leaving it all over the road, messing up your compound and such, and I doubt anything would happen. Then again, cats are just too sly and small to be caught. Let's leave it at that, I'm in enough trouble with the cat people already!

Shouldn't we come up with a more humane solution to the issue of stray dogs? Animal shelters already have their hands full with this.

As for Pulau Ketam, it seems to have drawn enough global attention to keep it on the map, although some blogs have been urging tourists to boycott Malaysia because of the stray dog issue. Oh, come on, if all countries with humanitarian problems were to be boycotted by tourists, then nobody would go anywhere!

Maybe with a bigger influx of tourists to the island, we can impose a "dog tax" on them and use the money for the welfare and maintenance of our furry friends. Along the way, also make efforts to better develop Pulau Ketam.

Then again, this might just lure the dolls back ....

This article was taken from: The Star Online: Lifestyle: Focus 15 May 2009