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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

TAIWAN STRAYS

My blog has been getting quite a large amount of hits from Taiwan which prompted me to do some surfing to check out the stray animal issue there.

Apparently strays are an issue no matter where in the world big cities are. In the past I've posted about the dogs of Pompeii Italy and strays in Singapore, now Taiwan.

From what I've found on the internet, black dogs and black dog mixes are prized as guard dogs. Their lives are spent tethered by short leases. Dogs that are no longer wanted by their families are let loose to become strays living terribly hard lives.

Cats and dogs are still used for food. There is an old abandoned mining town populated by stray cats that has become a destination for amateur photographers and tourists. The cats there are fed an taken care of to some extent by local people and volunteers.

There are other websites that depict the suffering of animals in ways too upsetting to contemplate. Whomever is reading my blog in Taiwan please do what you can to get others to change their attitudes about animals. We have a long way to go here in the United States but there are many dedicated people doing what they can to improve animal welfare. The Taiwanese people can do it too. All it takes is one person to start and your actions become like a pebble thrown in a quiet lake; the ripples will move into bigger and bigger circles.

Gandhi said the greatness of a country can be judged by the way it treats its animals. All nations need to become more humane in our treatment of animals. Start by alleviating the pain and suffering, make citizens accountable for what they do to animals, institute spay/neuter laws.

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