Our now-7 dogs

"If I see the dogs here by end August, I promise you I'll ask my [foreign] workers to trap the dogs in the open storeroom and ask the Environment to put them to sleep," quipped the man in his broken English, mislabelling animal welfare control in Singapore.

"You know what's going to happen har... they'll put them to sleep," the woman added.

Today, I was faced with two local employees left on the farm where our now 7 dogs (minus Lil' Anne) reside, in and out of the plot. The tenants who took care of our pack have left behind behind an empty ramshackle shed littered with styrofoam boxes, baskets, cartons, and calendars that date back to 1977. In this shed is a four-wooden-walled room where I surmise the angsty employees will corner our dogs into, as they'd said.

They spoke from behind window panes, not opening the door when I knocked. Statements laced with sarcasm, something unashamedly scheming about their demeanour unsettled me. Backed by claims that our dogs chase after and bite their clients and the postman.

There it was, we didn't leave the conversation on any point of agreement or reconciliation. But the confrontation reminds me the malice of human character. And further stimulated to take greater actions for our dogs. Our 8 dogs... living on their natural instincts to ward off outsiders on the land they've called home and where in canine spatial perspective, they've claimed a stake on the territory.

In obvious ways, our pack is the guardian, the protector of this land.

Saturday, we took over V for the day to feed the pack. We placed their basins in the clearing beside the plot beside a hydraulic excavator where they fed at.

This morning, the basins were stained almost completely in mud due to construction work at the site.

V and I brought the basins back under the shed to wash with rainwater and stalks of wild leaves. The best we could do with water supplies cut off and no proper cleaning tools in hand. Then, we poured water from the mini-jerry cans V lugs around everyday now, and filled the other basins with wet mixtures of bread, kibbles and meat.

How much of this 'treatment' do the dogs deserve? In what right should they have to end the lives of our dogs? To threaten us with their supposed 'condition'?

V said she'd go all out for her dogs. After this episode, I think I somewhat understand what she meant. To go all out for her dogs. To reclaim justice, to do what's right, to fight against innocence-trodding agents, to make sure our dogs are unscathed by malice so typical of Man.