"You can focus on your problems,

or you can focus on your purposes..."

"We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)?

When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do. That's why we're called human beings, not human doings."

"Think of ways to encourage one another to outbursts of love and good deeds. Hebrews 10:24"

Thanks GL for sharing this.

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This verse especially speaks to me in light of an incident yesterday where we were 'tested' in our character on how we help others in their times of need. When I let impatience and a sense of 'fed-up-ness' get the better of me. Where I probably see the person as the problem.

It's important that we encourage one another in our walk of life. And in the animal welfare scene, where there is almost always a person behind the animal we're helping, we have to learn how to get along together. How to encourage one another, lift them up in trying times, give them a hand, a kind word. Keep them going on strong in their purposes in Life.

The incident?

The dreaded scene of the authorities coming down to catch the dogs at one area. Again. Despite the majority of the dogs there being sterilised with our efforts and your donated funds (there are just 5 more wary ones that we have arranged for more help in catching). Despite a discussed compromise with the management. Despite an enclosure constructed to house the dogs during the daytime. Despite a discussion with the authorities to give the caregiver more time to condition the dogs to enter the enclosure each morning (unless we settle for the option to encage the dogs 24/7 and never letting them out at all).

It is a balance. Of responsibilities, authority, welfare, freedom. As said by my counterpart, volunteers are already helping the authorities to control the stray population by catching and sterilising the many strays along the routes. Without which, the population would be even booming. Puppies born had to be surrendered to the SPCA where the situation calls for. And for those who disagree, disagree only if you can take in the puppies and care for them permanently yourself. Else, the reality of street life and sacrifice plays out everyday.

That is the very reason for this situation. Cos a batch of puppies were not removed from the plot at an age when they were 'so cute' and manageable. And a caregiver could not bear to surrender them. Fast forward 6 months into the picture, you have full grown dogs roaming the plot 'freely' but never truly free to live.

Cos there are only 2 choices in fact:

- If the caregiver wants to keep them safe from being caught and culled, the dogs have to be kept in the enclosure 24/7. Cos once let off in the evening, it has been difficult to get them back into the enclosure in the mornings.
- If the caregiver wants to give the dogs freedom, then we have to be prepared for that freedom to be taken away too, for the authorities can come and nab the dogs by their wire nooses anytime without warning.

We were informed that the authorities may have caught 2 dogs from that area yesterday morning. If the information was right, they had caught Cho Cho. A lovely girl who was sadly ostracized by the pack and taken to stay on her own away from the others. She has been a most good girl - never disturbing the people, but rather, too shy to come to people mostly. Such a dog like her could never be labeled as a 'disturbance'. In fact, the dogs at that area do not disturb the people coming in and out at all. But we accept the fact that people who are afraid of dogs will always look at them in fear, despite the fact that the dogs do not even approach them at all. Like Cho Cho, they are contented to just have a little piece of space to rest, sleep, eat. Live. That was all they wanted from us humans.

But cos she was outside nearer the main road, and with no pack to offer protection in numbers, she was an easier target for the 3 men from the authorities who came with wire nooses that were flung to tightly pull onto the dogs' necks and dragged into their van.

I often wonder, if the authorities know that the dogs they catch are from the streets, that do not belong to anyone, that no one is gonna come bail out - when these dogs arrive at the pound and are rushed into the kennels - do the authorities there provide the basic needs of food and water? Before they destroy them? And what is the actual method of destroying all these strays caught off the streets?

Does anyone out there know for sure?