A teacher lost her furbaby, a Golden retriever, to cancer two years ago.
For three long months, she cried at different hours of the day, because she missed her doggy so much.
She would remember her dog eating from a bowl of food in the kitchen with so much gusto and smiling at her as if to thank her. When she went to the family room, she would “see” her furbaby lying on the couch or the floor sleeping. When she went out to the garden, she would “see” him running and playing with the hose. Every part of the house reminded her of her beloved pet.
One day, a friend who also lost a dog told her that she adopted a dog from the shelter.
Her friend said she went to a shelter to donate dog food and noticed an asong Pinoy or aspin with very sad eyes. When she approached the dog, the dog smiled at her. She fell in love.
She decided to adopt the dog and went through the adoption process. After two weeks, she brought home the dog.
As the days passed, the friend noticed that although she still thought of her dead pet, the sadness became less intense, until she can only remember her pet with love in her heart.
She encouraged the teacher to adopt a rescued dog too. The teacher did. In time, the teacher also noticed that she would remember her dead pet only with love and not with sadness anymore.
Both the teacher and her friend realized that they freed themselves from too much sadness when they adopted a rescued dog because they knew they were also honoring their dead pet. This, aside from the fact any dog – rescued or not—brings so much joy one’s life.
When you honor a dead pet by adopting a rescued dog or cat, you are actually saving a life. That makes the act of adopting more meaningful.
In Quezon City alone, at least 50 dogs are euthanized or put to sleep in the pound. Multiply that by four weeks, you have 200 dogs killed every month. Multiply that by 12 months, about 2,400 dogs are killed every year in Quezon City only.
Other local government units in Metro Manila and in the provinces have to kill pounds or a facility where dogs are killed either weekly or when the pound staff has to make space for new dogs caught by the catchers or surrendered by owners.
Some of the kill pounds are in Manila, Muntinlupa, and San Juan in Metro Manila, Davao City, Baguio City, San Jose del Monte in Bulacan, and in Laguna. There are more.
The sad reality is thousands of dogs and thousands of cats are killed every year.
Thousands more languish in no-kill pounds or pounds where dogs and cats are not euthanized or put to sleep, but who die slowly due to illnesses and hunger.
There are pounds whose staff say they have no budget for food. Imagine living your days and night without food or even water.
When a dog gets sick because the pound staff caught and brought in a dog with distemper or parvo or leptospirosis, and infects the other dogs, the older dog residents slowly die because they will not be given medicine to treat them of the illness. Imagine experiencing all the pain brought by the disease, of dying slowly, alone.
When you adopt a rescued dog or cat, you will save at least one dog or cat who will not be killed or will die slowly due to hunger or a disease in the pound.
When you adopt, you will also save that dog or cat who was hit by a reckless driver, a dog who was to be brought to a slaughterhouse to be killed for his/her meat, a cat who was to be fed to a snake or to be brought to a laboratory to be dissected
When you adopt a dog or a cat from an animal welfare group, you will allow the rescuers to rescue another dog or cat.
This is the best way to honor a beloved pet: to rescue another by adopting.
You, who loved your pet so much, have so much more love to give. I hope you can make an abandoned dog, or a maltreated cat, or a homeless animal feel that love too by adopting one of them from an animal welfare group.
Our group has adorable dogs and cats waiting for their forever home, a family to love them for the rest of their lives.
Here are some of the loving, sweet rescues of Save Animals of Love and Light (Save ALL Inc.). They are fully vaccinated and spayed or neutered. Please contact us on Facebook, or message Is La.