Note: picture above shows Bao Bao lying in sadness after his brother died.
I thought I knew the meaning of 'commitment'; until my pets died.
They were siblings of stray puppies that we took in and we named them Sirius Black and Bao Bao. As they were growing up, we fed them with our leftover meat bones. Whenever I had spare time, I gave them showers and applied flea and tick powder on their fur. They were fine until they were infected by an airborne disease. It was unfortunate that I was too young to drive and do not have the finance to pay their medical expenses; leading to their deaths.
It was then that it hit me: committing yourself to take care of your pets is fine, as long as you have the capability to take care of their well-being. There are several parents and teachers who encourage children to welcome stray animals into their homes. Anyone would agree that this would benefit in instilling humane traits in them. However, I realised that there is more to it than doing what is right. The adults missed out on teaching the kids that taking a stray animal as a pet as an act of kindness may not be as good as they imagined, whether it was encouraged or not.
What you could do as a solution is to educate the child on the basic responsibilities entailed in keeping a pet, such as: giving baths once a week, shopping food and shampoo, feeding them specific amounts at different times, etc.
You may ask, "If we are unable to do so, what could we do? We do want to help these stray animals."
There is a way. You could make donations to Care and Actions for Strays (CAS); either in their Bank Islam Brunei Darussalam (BIBD) or Standard Charted Brunei bank account. They are always in need of donations. I noticed posts on their Facebook page regarding requests for donations on saving injured strays. You could donate as little as five dollars as an anonymous donor. CAS volunteers will appreciate every penny. They have publicly expressed their hopes in targeting five thousand people who could donate around five to ten dollars a month.
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Pet Memorial
القصة القصيرةHello, world!! Can you believe it? It's the Year 2020, another chapter in our lives to fill in with new adventures and challenges! Which is exactly what the Writers' Movement will be doing; another chapter! In our usual case, another monthly theme...
