After staying in Taipei for 3 weeks, at last we can go out of the city, Madame Liu took us to Nantun Park of Taichung Animal Shelter.
The shelter is bigger, more interesting and more well-equiped with facilities than Taipei Animal Shelter. The shelter is divided into three parts: the administrative area, the demonstrative area (zoo), and the stray animal adaoption area.
After a short briefing about the animal shelter and current condition of the stray animals in Taichung, we officer took us around to visit the shelter and the mini zoo. The shelter can only keep 320 stray animals, thus euthanasia has to be performed every week. The workflow of animal rescue team of Taichung city is almost similar to the Taipei city. Stray animals brought in by the rescue team will be vaccinated to prevent disease transmission and parasite.
Cows and goats in the mini zoo.
Rabbits.
Geese.
We saw the ostrich before entering the shelter. Martina was very excited to see the big bird because they don't have ostrich in Czech.
Beautiful dears.
An innocent dog showing its pity face.
Little puppy kept in the puppy house.
The animal playgound.
Cats are kept in the cat's room with double doors because cats are very good in sneaking out and it is very difficult for people to catch them.
This pussy cat had just been sterilized.
The indoor playground for cats.
On the next morning, we took taxi to the National Chung Hsing University Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. I am so glad that graduates from this university is recognized by Malaysia.
While waiting for Madame Liu to buy breakfast for us, I looked around and took a lot of leaflets about cats and dogs diseases and preventions. Everything is written in chinese only, luckily my parents wanted me to learn chinese, otherwise I will not be able to read the leaflets. But I think that Taiwanese should consider to print every leaflets in bilingual. In Malaysia, leaflets, product packaging, and notices are all written in Bahasa Malaysia, English and Chinese, so that it would be more effective in delivering the information.
Dr Ray delivered a very interesting course about stray dogs condition in Taichung. Stray dogs problem is mainly caused by irresponsible owners who abandon them because of the expensive medical fees for their severely ill dog, and also breeders who abandon them because of the trouble to take care of the sick or old dogs and the high expenses on food and medicine.
Are you prepared to have a dog? Before getting a dog as pet, you should consider these few aspects:
1. Time
Do you have time to take care of your dog and play with your dog at least 1 hour per day? Providing food and shelter is not enough. Dogs need attention and love from owners. They will feel depressed if they are constraint at a limited space for a long period. Therefore, owners have to walk their dog everyday to let them do some exercise.
2. Food, Vaccination, Medication
Can you afford to provide healthy food, vaccination and medication to your dog? Raising a dog requires money. Vaccination and medication for dogs may be too costly for some people.
3. Purpose
Everybody has different purposes for keeping the dog. Some people keep dogs as pets because they are cute and it is a trend, while some people keep dogs because they need a companion to be a part of the family. Others keep dogs to guard the house or store for safety.
4. Life and death
Dogs lifespan is usually less than twenty years. It is most likely for dog breeders or owners to watch their dogs leaving them.
The life-quality of family dogs is getting better, life-span longer and social position getting higher; on the other hand, stray dogs life-quality is getting worse, life-span shorter and social position getting lower. Dogs in family are treated as jewel, but stray dogs are ignored and abandoned by people.
Stray dogs in Taiwan face four different fates. If the dogs are put into public shelter, they will be kept for two weeks, if they behave well, they will be put up for adoption, however if they are too old, weak or aggressive, they will be euthanized. If the dogs are put into private shelter, the dogs do not need to fear of being euthanized, but they have less space because of overpopulated shelter. Some dogs are lucky enough to meet the good Samaritans who feed them on the street or get adopted by people. Some stray dogs will be caught to be spayed or neutered in order to prevent the uncontrolled reproduction of stray animals.
There are several solutions toward strays to improve animal welfare. Animal vaccination can prevent disease transmission and can extend the life-span of animals as well as reduce pain. TNR has been carried out since 20 years ago, but still it is one of the most effective way to keep the number of stray animals in control. Animal shelters also promote animal adoption and encourage the people to adopt animals instead of buy from the pet shop.
After the short course, Dr Ray took us around the hospital to visit different sections.
I've studied about autoclave but never used it by myself, usually the lab assistant we help us to sterilize all the tools before our lab practicals because it takes time.
Had a peep into the operation theatre.
In the afternoon, we visited a private animal shelter at the outskirt of the city, Taichung Universal Animal Protection Association.
This naughty handicapped dog jumped up and licked my face, it was really disgusting to have saliva on my face, especially my lips. Luckily I have sanitizer to clean my face immediately.
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