A large local charity has taken over many of the houses in the neighborhood and feels, since some of the houses belong to it, that the neighborhood belongs to it. And like all institutions, everything is presentation, not content, so the neighborhood had to be “cleaned up” because otherwise Life might intrude on the difficult business of presenting the best face possible.
Our neighborhood is in a spot that locals feel is very isolated and so we constantly have dogs dumped here. Some are ignored and soon vanish. Some of them have been adopted into the neighborhood as sort of neighborhood strays that everyone feeds, while others have been formally adopted, named, and collared by specific families. Nevertheless, the charity called the disposal people and had all the dogs on the street swept up – including the collared dogs who cannot legally be taken (another disturbing aspect of the implicit Authority of Large Institutions is that they are frequently able to give orders to overrule the law, which has no normative force in local culture, and they are frequently able to give orders in areas where they have no formal authority). Females first, they said, as the charity was afraid they might have pups. As a result, a large number of local dogs have disappeared, including several very nice dogs that I loved. That was bad enough.
What was worse, however, was that the charity, wanting to have the dogs killed (and this is a Buddhist charity) slyly didn’t inform the people around us who had lost their dogs so that they could go claim their animals back from the dog pound. Our neighbors searched for several days, until one of them had the bright idea of asking the representatives of the local charity if they knew where the dogs were. But by then, the seven day period had passed…
My neighbor says her heart aches. So does mine. And now I live in fear that when we’re away someday, the charity will have my three dogs disposed of… “but the door got open and the dogs got out. Sorry! We didn’t know they were yours…can’t imagine how that door got open…”[/quote]
One of the hosts of a recently held Companion Animal Welfare Forum was the Life Conservationist Association, a large buddhist organization. AnimalsTaiwan has several contacts to find out more about what happened in Taichung, as well as making sure that it doesn’t happen again. To do this we need a little more information than what is available in the posting, e.g. which neighborhood in Taichung (city or prefecture), what buddhist organization, what Animal Health Inspection Office has jurisdiction, when did this happen, etc. Can you post this information, so I can make some inquiries ?
Yeah, a charity … like all these private commercial ‘temples’ you see pop-up around the country … must be a lot of money in it … and being Buddhist? I doubt …
Since the charity has been described as “large” and “Buddhist”, I will assume it is Tzu Chi until informed otherwise. I don’t understand why people post stuff like that and then don’t name names - It makes it very difficult to actually do anything about the problem.
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]What is anyone doing, I mean actually doing regarding this?
And, IMO, it wrong to assume its Tzu Chi until that fact has been confirmed.[/quote]
What forces me to make that assumption is precisely that the full facts have not been made available by those who know them. We can’t actually do anything about it until we know the background, and for some reason Michael Turton doesn’t want to tell us which charity he is talking about.
Why not?
Those familiar with Buddhism and charities, and the size and influence of those charities, in Taiwan will likely be thinking along the same lines as me. If it’s not Tzu Chi, would Michael Turton or anyone else who knows the facts please tell us who it is?