Is everything we are doing a waste of time?

I will get moaned at for this post, but i have to get it out.

I’m part of animalstaiwan and i’m a very proud member, but on days like this i ask myself if we are really making a difference.

Every day i see pain. I see poor animals dying and in pain. We can’t save them all, the more we save the more are dumped.

The pain inside me is overwhelming. I don’t know how much more i can take. I think of myself as a strong person, but it is getting the better of me. With every joy there comes pain.

I continuously scan these pages looking for good stories, happy news, I want to know things are changing, that we are making a difference.

THere is no point to this post, but to say… tell me all your happy stories.

Bollocks to that! The more you save the more are saved. That’s it. Every single one you save is one saved. You and you others have my absolute deepest admiration because YOU ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE.
Never forget that. Ever.

Don’t give up. You can’t do everything, but you CAN make a difference. Well done for all your unselfish work.

Remember that story about the old man on the beach, patiently picking up starfish that were washed up on the shore and throwing them back into the sea. For each one he threw back, another 10 washed onto the shore. A passer by asked him why he was wasting his time, when he wasn’t really making a difference. The old man replied, as he tossed the starfish back into the ocean, “I made a difference to that one, and that one…”

Everyone has bad days – I’m sure even Stray Dog has them, though he wouldn’t let on! AnimalsTaiwan has made an immense difference to the lives of countless animals and people. I suspect maybe you’re hoping to see tangible results in society’s attitudes or maybe the law? Well, that could be decades away, but what you are doing now is the catalyst that will mean it will happen, however far in the future. It’s something that should give you hope, not despondency.
I think you need to make yourself a big fluffy bunny outfit (faux fur, of course) and practice your hopping and carrot-munching for the Roots’n’Shoots parade! Things are moving forward, and you have helped greatly. :rainbow:

Hey ukbikerchic, I agree. We should share more happy stories. Ok So I find a 6 week old puppy with k9D. He’s emaciated, sick, weak and all alone in a park with no possible food source nearby. We go to the vet and he suggests we put him down. I refuse. We struggled for months with various issues. Now he is a 7 month old happy and healthy puppy, my friend can’t believe his transformation when he pops by my place. I also have several cats and dogs for him to play with while I’m gone, so he is never alone. I tried to find him a home but have decided to keep him forever.This special little guy makes me laugh every day! :laughing: He hogs the bed, likes to spoon and kisses me goodnight and good morning. Hope you have a smile on your face girl :slight_smile: :wink:

Wasn’t your motto “Every little bit counts?” Keep your head up, you guys are doing a tremendous job, given what you had to work with (I don’t mean Stray Dog) to begin with.

You will make a tiny difference around you, then that will expand to people around you, then the community around you, then the communities around you. Change takes time, so don’t worry, you’re making a heck of a difference.

Go, AnimalsTaiwan!

Thank you everyone for your encouragement :smiley:

It was a very bad day, and there have been others like it, but i have had some very good news also so things are balancing out.

I will keep doing what i do and whenever i do feel like giving up i only have to look at my animals to know there is hope and we can make a difference.

Once i have my house i will have a new edition to the family. Charley the German Sheperd at Animalstiawan will be coming to live with me :smiley: .

That will make my house 5 dogs and a cat. Charley should be happy as he will be surrounded by girls, :wink:

But do keep the good stories coming, it really is nice to read the success stories.

[quote=“UKbikerchic”]It was a very bad day, and there have been others like it, but i have had some very good news also so things are balancing out.[/quote]Your post rings a very loud bell. Animals Taiwan has been nothing short of a roller-coaster ride for us. Some good news, and some not so good news. Some heart-warming moments, and some tears. Some laughs, and some disagreements. Some fun, and some hard work. Some good days, and some not so good days.

[quote]I will keep doing what i do and whenever i do feel like giving up i only have to look at my animals to know there is hope and we can make a difference.
[/quote]When I get frustrated, down, or plain discouraged, I think of the animals we helped. I give one of our animals a good scrub. I think of the animals I came to love and how desperate they would be without our help. It helps me, too.

I liked Tom’s post a lot. You could say that it brought a big smile for me. It’s not easy to be consistently assertive. But at the end of the day, if you helped make an animal be more comfortable, what can be possibly wrong with that? That’s where the buck stops.

Good stories? I’m not sure where to begin… I’ll just pick one of my favs. :wink:

Picked up 9 pups and a mother almost 4 months ago now. That’s 10 dogs. A lot of work. We saved all of the pups. A large litter of nine all lived past pneumonia and severe diarrhea. 7 were adopted and so was the mother. Two pups are still under our care, and they greet me with tails wagging 100 miles per hour everyday. :slight_smile:

A few friends of mine have something to say to you, UKbikerchic…

[color=red]Thank You! [/color]

Uncanny!

Are they the same cats? Just same color? I had this pic hosted as I helped the person who was trying to find them homes post the pic. I used the pic in my last post because I think it’s very cute. The other animals are from Kaohsiung, all helped by ATK. Some are still under our care and needing permanent homes, some were CNRed, and some were adopted.

Talking about ups and downs, the last pic I posted is of Belly. We rescued her as a pup and adopted her quickly. The third time we called the new caretaker to make sure she was spayed, we were informed that it was not possible because she had just had a litter. :s Last weekend I made the trip to a small island off the south-west coast to visit her. She lives on Shaliosho island, but she was in Dongang last weekend recuperating with the owner’s son because she was finally spayed. She should be back on the island sometimes next week. All of her pups were adopted, thank goodness. It was good to see her wagging tail and very happy despite wearing a cone, but she looked quite older now. Having a litter really took a toll on her. In the end, she’s still better off than having had to survive on the street, in fact, aside from the litter she had, she has the best home a dog can dream of on the island. It’s all good.

Just the same colour. Just a nice coincidence. Both rescues, though.

Aaawk. I certainly hope not. I’m counting on St. Peter to let me thru the pearly gates for all the freakin’ time I’ve spent tinkering on the AnimalsTaiwan Website. Which you should visit if you haven’t seen it before or recently. It’s had a huge makeover.

Just today I came across a Gandhi quote I think everyone has heard before:
[color=darkred]
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
Mahatma Gandhi - India[/color]

I’ve always sensed that he was right on in this observation. I think this best explains my recent time outlays on the animal front.

On the other hand, I’m not so convinced of AnimalsTaiwan’s utility in saving dogs one-by-one. I mean, it’s great and all, but I’m not so sure organizing a group around this concept is so efficient. My girlfriend and I have rescued seven animals this past year while doing it completely independently of A.T. Maybe this is something that is better done in a decentralized way. People often use groups as a way of passing the buck off themselves.

I tend to see the value of A.T. more in terms of its future. We probably have the power to influence a much greater number of animals’ lives if we can accelerate the adoption of an efficient CNR project here. And by being an uncommonly visible group with a lot of expat members, I think we definitely contribute to positive social change on the animal welfare issue. …to get back to the quote above. I could go on… but I’ll leave it at that.

Here is a cool link related to CNR: tinyurl.com/gkggr

I’ll be going to Bali soon to see first hand how they perform theri CNR. I’m really interested to know what they do with sick or injured dogs that they catch.

Re. the one-by-one approach vs. stopping the problem at its root, I couldn’t agree more. As AnimalsTaiwan grows, it will grow in the CNR, spaying neutering, and educational department while continuing to run an animal rescue operation at its current level or perhaps more. The individual rescues get us lots of attention and support, and immediate reward. It can run side-by-side with other operations. We may not be saving the world by rescuing individuals, but to the individuals, we have saved their world.

As for the AnimalsTaiwan website, I have to say that you have done an outstanding job on that, far and beyond what anyone could have wished for or expected of anybody donating their skills as you have done. I’m working on updating it with you now. We are constantly commended on the site, and when you compare it to the websites of other, far larger organizations, it simply blows them away.

If anyone has anything they would like to contribute to the site, please PM myself or dearpeter with your suggestion or final copy. If it’s helpful, it’ll be used!

Thank you!

Sean

When I was growing up in Massachusetts, here in the states, I can remember dogs mating in our schoolyard. A few people spayed their female dogs but no one neutered the males. We got our dog Candy when a neighbor’s lab got impregnated by another neighbor’s boxer. This was a common way to get your puppy- wait until someone’s female dog got pregnant and the owner was giving away the pups. That was in the 6o’s. When we had our male husky see a vet he recommended we neuter him. I was surprised- it never crossed my mind until the vet mentioned it. That was the 8o’s. Now, in 2006, the local shelters are bringing dogs from Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Georgia, etc. because we have more homes looking for dogs than dogs available. We are now focusing on cats. Education is the big key to change. Don’t get discouraged- change may be slow at first but, boy, when it catches on it really snowballs. We now even sell license plates with Span/Neuter on them with proceeds going toward shelters. The local paper prints pictures of local animals that are waiting to be adopted, often elderly or with special needs, every Saturday, with great success. The breed rescue groups organize walks that raise money for animal care. I went to one that had hundreds of people attend. None of this would be happening now if it wasn’t for people like yourselves doing rescue and education over 20 years ago. The work you do now will save thousands of animals in the future. Those animals are counting on you!!!

AT is making a difference in the lives of animals beyond those that it touches directly. It is raising the public’s awareness even in indirect ways. For example, one of my students happened upon the Animals Taiwan Sunday Flea market and bought something. She mentioned it in class and it started a class discussion on animal rights, owner’s responsibilities, and the animal situation in Taiwan. Also, an AT-inspired article was written about spaying/neutering animals for my school’s reading corner. It has been read by dozens and dozens of people. The same article was put in an in-house English magazine for a large company here which employs thousands and thousands. Alos, AT has been in the newspaper and on the radio many times. Every person who reads or hears these stories or happens by any event has their awareness raised. The home-vs-CNR debate has no easy answer, but AT is slowly changing perceptions here. AT is making a difference.

df

Yes you are making a difference. Even if each person only saves one animal in their lives it’s a difference. And even if it turns out you can’t look after the animal for its whole natural life, but can give it a happy life for whatever period of time it is a difference.

hi
I can understand how you feel, but just to make you feel a little better…here’s the story of Happy and Sambuka.

Happy was found by my friend Marcia, badly beaten(we think) and dying. AnimalsTaiwan took him in, paid for operations to fix his leg etc. He was fostered by my gf, but when she had to leave for a holiday she couldn’t imagine giving him away ,so he has now been adopted. Sure, he’s quite an abstract looking doggie (weird skull, missing teeth, which makes his tongue hang out, huge scar in his neck, huge scar on his back, and that gimpy leg that can’t bend, and which he uses as a kickstand, but these days actually uses it to walk on!) but he is the most handsome dog I have ever seen. His eyes are soooo beautiful.

Sambuka isn’t an AnimalsTaiwan dog, I found her on Forumosa. She had big hip issues because she spent her first 6 months in a cage, the other 6 months tied up. AnimalsTaiwan offered to help me find a good vet and a sollution to her problem.(One vet actually quoted NT$ 300 000 for fake hips) When I wanted to give her up, Sean immediately offered to take her in, and find someone who could give more attention to her.(she was shredding my apartment apart while I was at work)

Where are they today? We get up at 7.30am every morning and take them for a long(and difficult) walk in Hsintien mountain. Usually we get home after 8am and then they get chicken and we decide which house to keep them in.(Gf (J)and I live 3 mins walk away from each other) Doggies became a couple while I was house-sitting Js house for 5 weeks. They are now inseperable. Happy has calmed Sambuka down so much, she doesn’t cause much trouble anymore. Sambuka has turned Happy into a real dog…he copies her…she taught him how to chew a rawhide bone the other day…chewed it in half then gave half to him.(his lack of teeth makes it difficult) Happy’s leg can’t bend, but he JUMPS up to my face when I get home. He looks way spastic while doing it, but wow, what an achievement! Every night the 4 of us cuddle in bed together. Some nights we wake up and Happy has forced his way onto our pillows, and stretched his paws out so we get moved aside in our sleep! Both of them sleep with their heads on the pillows:)

The other night we tried having alone time with our dogs, so I headed home with Sambuka and Happy managed to get his head out of his collar and ran home after us.

I will add some pics of the happy couple. See how I have to fight to get a spot on the bed (Happy is lying behind me on my pillow!)

don’t give up hope…every animal is so worth it.

wonder why the other 2 pics wont show…oh well, you get the picture. Just not those two…hahaha. :unamused: