Update on UNMC AW (4 February 2016)

Since the last email to Management, I have got some responses from Uni, that I can’t publish their response so if anyone would like to know how did the management response. Please kindly PM me, and I will let you know verbally or through private messages.

This is another email that I send to Management regarding a few reported cases.

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Hi All,

This is an update, and keep management fully informed of the recent reported cases. Which will be published in UNMC Animal Welfare as my personal responsibility to the students.

1. The puppies that we mentioned in the earlier emails. Still wandering on campus, and also two of the puppies have shown sign of limping. It could be previous accident causing some minor bone fractures, sprain which hasn’t recovered after more than 3 weeks. Please keeps UNMC Animal Welfare update of management’s position of the previous plan.  There is no update of how the previous TNRM program that Management mentioned went, no transparence – not unexpected – of the progress.

2. A cat has been discovered in UNMC ill, and being treated by Dr Cham, and Lhavanya has been giving the cat two tablets per day for four days. also fed her once a day. It is her volunteer effort and I have helped a bit.

3. A dog has been reported limping and possibly just got into accident earlier this morning in front of the UNMC Guardhouse. I can’t get a closer evaluation of the seriousness of the injury. There are dirts over his body.

4. Please reply of Management position in regards.

—-

Sengtat

An update of UNMCAW, Open Letter to UNMC Management

Hi All,

This is an email to update the stray dogs situation on campus, and I have send the this email to UNMC Management. For some of you who may be wondered what have been happening with UNMCAW, I hope you find your answers here.

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1. i have documented a few photos of new dogs be found on campus. Also being reported by students through UNMC Animal Welfare asking me/us to help.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153416203324209&set=pcb.409455599251701&type=3&theater

2. There is a mother dog have gave birth to a litter of puppies, and I saw some of her puppies wandering around campus. She is still breast feeding her puppies, and I am not sure where her location is.

3. This is my following message to the management, and this email will be publicised on UNMC Animal Welfare and better inform the students about what has happened in the last few years. Our effort in initiating, participating, organising the best solution in keeping the stray dogs population to the lowest in UNMC Campus. Although I do not have rigid factual evident, as tracking stray population on campus is not an easy job, it requires a full-time monitoring, and document, every stray dogs on campus that is beyond my resources to keep track.

We started Animal Welfare, and got a few parties on board in TNRM program. (Trap, Neuter, Release, Manage) and because University doesn’t want to keep the stray dogs on campus, we spent times to find adopters, and get most of the dogs adopted out.

It was a lot of time and effort putting into it, so that the population gets under controlled – meaning, the existing stray dogs on campus that we can’t manage to trapped, they have their own territorial boundary to keep other stray dogs coming in. and the dogs that we manage to trap, we spayed the female so there is decrease in pregnancy and puppies. We are certain that before the “one-off Catch-Spayed-Relocate operation” There was only one last female left unspayed, and that is the only female that have recently gave birth.

i have ask around to check if fellow UNMC students feel the stray dogs issue has been managed, some of them told me that, they feel a lot better since they now can run by the lake, and it used to be so many stray dogs that they can’t run and enjoy jogging.

When UNMC Management decided to have an “one-off operation” I have known it wouldn’t works, but not given any space for negotiation into discussing why it wouldn’t work. For the various reasons:

1. It will messed up the existing stray territorial,
Which has been happening, Some of the dogs that meant to be captured during the process, has disappeared, and return to campus. With a few new stray dogs coming in (They are friendly to human, because they haven’t learn how to survive on campus like the others)

2. Rebreeding will happens in the future: when we first started, there are nearly 30+puppies on campus, 3 littles being born within the a same period. We have adopted most of the puppies out during that time.

3. Soon or later, the population of stray dogs on campus will increase, (and have been increasing).

UNMC – namely University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus,

I find it particularly irony, when it market itself as “Top Global University” and commercialise it in a way that seems prestige. When University Nottingham UK have such a huge support in managing dogs. Where they set up a puppy room for students:
“Twenty one young guide dogs descended on The University of Nottingham today to help students cope with exam stress. The Law Society’s Wellness Week hosted the pet therapy sessions with the aid of charity Guide Dogs.
Nine puppies at a time took part in the ‘puppy room’ sessions. The puppies involved in the event also benefitted by gaining vital socialisation skills to help them on their way to become guide dogs.”

(https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/…/puppy-power-eases-exam-st…/)

In Malaysia Nottingham Campus, we have someone from the management discussing the best way to deal with the dogs is either shooting them or poisoning them:

http://nottingham-university.blogspot.my/…/doggy-position.h…

“I asked if any action have been taken against the dogs, and yes, shooting was the answer. But to do so it had to be done on open spaces. The deceased dogs are then replaced by newborns. The guards don’t know where they all come from, but they theorize that the owners were Indians from some near settlement. Numerous shootings have occurred for a long time, but there was no visible difference and has long been discontinued. The wild dogs are shot outside in the open fields away from UNMC, to minimize the risk of injuring someone on campus, of course.

Halls have also been secured with doors on each wing covered in wire and the posted signs remind people to keep the hall doors shut at all times. Due to the diversity of the student population, even the SPCA was discouraged to take action including catching due to some of their “concern’s on animals’ rights”.

The ‘main’ entrance for these dogs would be behind the sports complex near the nursery and the place where they live, according to the guards, is underneath the library and behind the Yellow building.

An OPINION to solve the problems was this: Make some poisoned Ramli burgers and drop it off where the dogs would hang out.
I thought to myself “Perhaps we could do this without telling the students” (this was my opinion). ”
Although this article is being published back in 2011, things have changes throughout the following years due to the students demand on better and humane treatment for dogs. Still, it provides some illustration of the mentality within UNMC Management that persists up till today. If we did not make any effort into voicing up, no one knows what would have happen to the stray dogs on campus.

I am not an extreme hardcore animal activist, I am just someone who can’t stand the double standard being put forward by any institution.

Let me get through this one more time,

1. Stray issues is indeed an issue in Malaysia, deal with it in the best way you can even if it takes a long time because dealing with any population control requires times (years of effort). Set a great example of being the top global university for others to follow.

2. Sensitivity sentiments of some community on campus regarding dogs. (That was one of the reason that I have got from the response, for why management need to have an “one-off operation” )

I have came across a few muslims who want to get involves, in helping us proactively. I don’t know what management means by “sensitivity of some communities” If you are talking about muslims, I can assures you that is not the case, http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/…/i-want-to-touch-a-dog-….

3. Dogs that are aggressive, I agree they need to be dealt with. The aggression of dogs come from many factors, they either has been trapped, abused, and learn the behaviours of “I should attack humans” as a protective coping mechanism, And they are aggressive during mating season. So, deal with the aggressive dogs and neuter every dogs.

4. Dogs have bitten students, how about those who are on campus that poured hot oil or water to the dogs? Yes, I have helped two dogs that covered in scares, fleshy raw skin open wound, and the vet suggests it is not skin infection, it is caused by boiling water. Their entire face has burnt, and still they were friendly to humans.

5. Feeding dogs on campus is not about encouraging dogs to stay on campus.
5.1: When dogs are hungry, they hunt for food with or without students feeding them. They go to rubbish bins and dumps to find food.
5.2 Human being is about caring, we have been domesticating animals since we ever existed in the universe. We don’t ignore starving animals just because it doesn’t help you to get more intakes and earn more money. We are human beings who care for lives, i am not just saying stray dogs, but every living being in the world. If there is a starving dogs on campus, feed them nicely at some location that is away from the cafeteria will helps them to feel less starving and go into cafeteria in order to look for food.

6. This will be my last email to the management regarding Stray Dogs Issues. I have tried my best in doing whatever I can for the university regarding the stray dogs issue. And over and over again, Management think there is a quick way to fix the problems, turn a blind eye to what we have been doing, and disregarding the best solution in managing dogs population. As much as I want to feel like I am part of the university, who can help and impact the university, it was disappointing on how “approachable” our university management is.

So in any case in the future time, when stray dogs population have flars up again, University management will be accountable for the consequences.

Sincerely,
Sengtat

Paw Prints Never Fades – R.I.P Temple Dog

UNMC Animal Welfare was founded by Tessa and I, back in last October 2013. There weren’t any structure in place and dogs were everywhere in this university. Students have polarising opinion regarding the matter of stray dogs wandering around campus area. Some hate dogs and some love dogs. Personally, I think the existence of this group is to continue challenge the depressing humanity.

We rescued our very first dog who have been through two splashed of hot oil, where his body is scared twice, with large patch of skin burning off him. We call him scarface. I saw him walking around university, and no one, no one did anything to help this friendly dog. You see scarface walk past cafeteria, study area, with so many people, wagging his tail with a large patch of raw flesh, and I was shocked, sad, and feeling helpless at the same time.

A year later, UNMC Animal Welfare have gains support from university management board, and some students who love dogs and don’t mind getting their hands dirty. We have rescued so many puppies, kittens, dogs and cats. And at the very least, we are a part of someone, who doesn’t just pretend to be a student or academic institution that claims to do good for humanity, enriching life but actually cares only about moneys, grades, and fames. I apology if I sounds both skeptical and cynical at the same time. We have had too many depressing experiences, that sometime overly outweigh small efforts of goodness. That doesn’t mean I discredit all the small efforts by some students who contacted us. I really enjoy hanging with students in this way, we walks the dogs that have been trapped and going through treatment, we spent times going back and forth to vet. It made me feel solid and real in this world of “i want to change the world” and actually carry out no action.

I want to record my personal journey with Animal Welfare, especially with Tessa, Jiin, Treshi, Lhavanya and everyone that have worked with us before. By writing an incident we encountered yesterday. Tessa have noticed an online SOS through Cherish Life by a random facebook user, who took a 9 seconds video. In that 9 seconds video, we saw the dog laying on the bridge. When we were there, we saw the temple dog is with a broken leg, and his bones sticking out, dried up with rotten flesh and maggots.

We have made a few calls to the temple, to check if the dog is still at the bridge, and they told us there is no dog as such. But We thought we will just head over the temple and try our luck. We got there before the nightfall, as we approach the bridge, there is a family gathering hanging around relaxing. They saw us carrying a dog catching pole and leash, and told us the dog is still over the bridge. So we went there, pick up the dog, and brought it to the vet right away.

The next day, we are told that the dog past away because he is too weak with his internal injuries and long infected broken legs, and couldn’t made himself through the night. Something strikes me hard about myself, that I want to share with anyone who follow this particular rescue. Since that very first time I got my hands onto stray dog, I have came a long way to developed a emotional coping skill, that I don’t emotionally response to incident like this.

This is too much, as it happens in a Temple. The dog must have hang around in the Temple before and after the accident have happened, So many tourists, religious human being who must have walk past this temple dog, and no one give a damn to it just because he is bleeding, the worse part is to left it under rains for so many days? What is the point of having all kind of animal statues, pretty cultural sculptures, beliefs, myths, when actually, the spirit of animals running around the temples is invisible?

There is something, fundamentally wrong about humanity. Personally, I feel angry and sad after the incident, at first I discovered how desensitised I over times, and later I feel a strong urge to go and knock down all the animal statues, burn sculpture to ashes. Just so that human being can look into the eyes of temple dog, without any distraction. I want to make them realise and turns these sadness visible to them. They won’t look at all the pretty statues in the temple, and ignore the dying temple dog. The blood of the temple dog will never fades in our backseat, just like his paw prints. Sadly keeps reminding me how dark humanity can possibly gets.

R.I.P I hope you are now free and happy from this fucked-up world. https://www.facebook.com/cherishlifehome/videos/885207508218076/

A post released by UNMC Expression – Re: Poison the dog in TTS

After half a year, Nottingham non-official student and lecturer led social group – UNMC Animal Welfare has come to a great success, if You manage to view the online portfolio in this website, You will know that we have done some amazing job as a social activist and animal lover. We manage to gather students animal lover, draw attention from various different levels of NGO, and have been trying our best to collaborate and do the best we could, just to lower down the suffers cause by humans.

This post, is partly disappointing and heart breaking. Personally, I myself recall a few words of one of my Lecturer. He told me, “you will just need one person to bring the entire ship down, just one”. The purpose for me to start off animal welfare facebook group is simply because, i wish to gather enough animal lover to let people know that – We are watching and stop abusing dogs. When such the post from UNMC Expression released, it seems to me that, you know what, people can go to the extreme end of the continuum and simply poison the dogs. We can’t really do anything to prevent that from happening.

In Nottingham UK campus, We have room for dogs, all the dog lover giving such care for dogs in the UK Nottingham Campus. In Malaysia, we are struggling to even get puppies adopted and get stray dogs spay.

This is again to raise a warning. Animal abuse is a criminal offense.

Click to access animal_ordinance_1953.pdf

I strongly urge Nottingham Malaysia Campus to spread the awareness of “No Animal Abuse” instead of “Do not feed the dog in cafeteria area” If any NGO can send an email to show Your support it will be awesome. Please email to unmcaw@gmail.com We will try to compile and document it.

UNMC Expressions

3 hrs ·

Expression ‪#‎O11016‬

“If someone does not do something about the wild dogs of tts5/6, I will personally feed them meat mixed with lots of rat poison. So you dog lovers better bring this matter to attention otherwise there will be 4 […] found soon. Sincerely a fed up student!”

https://www.facebook.com/groups/UNMCAnimalWelfare/

To view the creditability of UNMC Expression – please click the link – http://unmctheroundtable.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/unmc-expressions/ 

 

Sign our petition!

We request that ineffective dogcatching at UNMC be stopped, and that a strategy incorporating desexing and tactics to minimise human-dog interactions be adopted, as per the report provided below.

Summary

•    Research has shown that dog catching is not controlling the campus dog population.
•    There are currently at least three litters of 5-8 puppies each on campus.
•    Several of the breeding females have successfully evaded multiple attempts at catching by the UNMC dogcatchers.
•    Dogs are getting through the campus boundaries on a regular basis.
•    There continue to be numerous dogs at the SA cafeteria and elsewhere, begging for food scraps and digging though rubbish bins.

Recommendations

•    The population management strategy should be shifted to one of spaying, which will also ameliorate many problematic human-dog interactions.
•    Boundary maintenance should continue being practiced, but with the understanding that it will not be completely successful at preventing dogs from entering the campus.
•    The balcony at the SA cafeteria should be fenced/gated, and a safe space provided for students to deposit scraps to be fed to the dogs away from the eating areas.

Pathetic Developing Nation – Malaysia

In Malaysia, social issues are often marginalized and ignored by the government. For instance, stray issues, poverty, homeless, illegal migrants, sex workers, human trafficking, refugees, you name it. All these aren’t taking into the consideration of the home ministry. They spent their time on propagating One Malaysia intended to promote unity of the citizens, but contradicted with itself, allowing the Islamic community to claim the right of using Allah.

Stray animals (Dogs and Cats) are a major issue in this country, and yet, even there is an animal abuse law in this country – Animal Act 1953 Part IV. The Local government body, often is the one who commits such crime and the citizens often are disempowered. The fact that, there is NO population control project was being discussed by the government (What local council often and normally does is, trap the dog, kill the dog violently) is even depressing.

Such situation resulting in a rising number of NGO that try to rescue dogs in their own way. Which could be problematic, In which, NGO often has their own policy of stray dog management and sometimes contradicted by the local law. For instance, NGO might break into houses in order to rescue dogs, which act as a rather extreme ‘animal activist’ way. Even that, it is understandable that, when government is not doing anything to assist the animal in this country, it drives people to the level that they could do whatever it takes to rescue dogs in terrible condition. Furthermore, different NGO has different ways of their own management, some could be quite aggressive, some could be quite disorganized, especially when they try to rescue dogs and disregard the social convention. After all, it is totally understandable that all of these NGO simply could not stand animal suffering from hunger, abused, disease and all kinds of terrible illness.

Even with all the limitation that citizens have, we are still trying to manage and construct a social NGO framework to work within smaller institutional/ government framework. It is amazing to observe how one NGO grows big enough to have massive supports from different countries across the world, but again, if all of these NGO arising from Malaysia could somehow centralize, it will then be so much efficient.

Other than government responsibility, studying in Nottingham Malaysia does get us to understand how a corporate/institution’s response to their corporate responsibility toward animal issues. For instance, personally, I think the management is at least responding in comparison to another institution. However, it is always ironic to see the effort of our campus management putting in to dog catching and release in other places, leaving stray dogs continue to be straying in other places, while we have another UK campus, that give out fund to spay dogs and take good care of animal welfare. To illustrate, one corporate should not dumb the things/animals that they do not want, to other places to let them overpopulating in the neighbour community. Worse, no tolerance of dogs on campus will then generate a stronger belief of dog hates, that further encourage students/staff to ‘dislike’ dogs. Which then possibly encourage further dog abuse on campus. Instead, what management should do, is to educate the students a way to coexist with stray dogs and create a dog/student friendly community. From the Nottingham Malaysia experience, I can imagine other corporation across Malaysia to simply dumb the stray dogs away from their area and let alone the neighbour community to face stray overpopulation issue.

What to expect, when we have both the corporate and government running from their responsibility to take care of the animal?

For Your information, UNMC Animal Welfare is another NGO, that work voluntarily from a group of students and lecturers who can’t stand puppies being kicked, hot water being poured on dogs, and decided to form a community to present to the students that. We, animal lover, are watching.

We are having out second recruitment drive meeting tomorrow

Our first spaying!

We are very proud to say that we have just completed our first spaying of a stray dog from the TTS/UNMC community, thus launching our TNR (trap-neuter-release) programme!

Blicky!

‘Blicky’, who recently gave birth to a litter of 7 puppies (originally 9, but 2 died shortly after their birth) who have been looked after and adopted out by an amazing group of UNMC students (more on this soon), was spayed this Wednesday, ensuring that she doesn’t contribute any further to the stray dog population in TTS/UNMC, and in Malaysia more generally. She has been returned to her existing territory within TTS (Edusquare) , and is being monitored to ensure that her healing process continues to go smoothly. She was also vaccinated against canine distemper and canine parvo virus, to ensure that she remains healthy and continues occupying her territory and thus prevents more non-spayed dogs from moving in and breeding. We have her marked with a collar/tag to indicate that she has been spayed, although we hope to move to ear-notching as a more permanent marker in future operations.

Her ‘boyfriend’, named ‘Puppy’ by the students in the area Blicky and he occupy, is very happy to have her back, even though we have blocked his ability to become a father to any more of her puppies! He was very upset when we took her to the vet. Blicky and Puppy are looked after and fed by the kind boss of the Edusquare guard team, and in return, they act as guard dogs for Edusquare community.

This spaying operation was made possible by the generous donations made by a number of UNMC staff – THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT! We currently have enough funding pledged for at least 6 more spaying operations, but we need more to make a real difference. If you would like to pledge money towards our TNR programme, please let us know – drop us a comment, or email us at unmcaw(at)gmail.com – and please spread the word about and support for us. We are currently taking pledges (promises of funding), and collecting money gradually/as we use it for operations, until we get a bank account sorted out for the group.

Related:

Blicky (Spay Profile)

Blicky’s Babies

Journal of assisting the strays.

Helping animals aren’t easy, for people to never volunteer before, they probably wouldn’t realize that a lot of efforts are required.

I personally amazed by our friends, both lecturers and students in Nottingham Malaysia through the very first step of Animal Welfare. With zero funding and very little knowledge of dog behavior, we manage to initiate a movement of ‘animal welfare‘, by planning to register under school of modern language and culture, initiated from students across different school under Nottingham, and supportive Lecturer Tessa, and some amazing people from different community aware of our project.

The movement started back in November last year from just a few students posting images and collaborating each other including me coordinating everyone, and come together to help a few dogs who being abused and injured horribly – Ruby, Scarface, Kokoro and within a few months, some of our international students stepped in and started to be more aware of the stray dog issue around their residential community, and amazingly built up a small scale shelter and give in time to take care of these newborn puppies with no funding.

These newborn puppies are still waiting to be adopted over here :

Pet-Finder-Profile

Google Location-Semenyih-Nottingham Malaysia

The group is having an amazing concept to approach and assist Animal Population control from the very bottom, Since both The Corporations and Government are inefficient, First, They don’t invest money and time to do Spaying Project, but keep on catching them and relocate and kill them. They can’t seem to understand the basic concept, dog gets to give birth and resulting a 4-8 puppies at once. They keep on catching which will not help to lower the population.

Therefore, we initiated a Spaying Project firstly from educational institutions and utilize the student force to impact neighborhood society. Although our school Management isn’t supportive in terms of what we are doing, but it is understandable that eventually university is still a kind of complex businesses. We welcome this project to be adopted by different school and society and through education institution, we impact the society around us.

Feeding Stray Dogs Cheaply and Well

Did you know that you can make food for stray dogs pretty cheaply, rather than spending money on supermarket dogfood that’s not really worth the price?

All you need to know is a few basics – dogs should eat a diet very similar to a balanced human diet – roughly 40% protein, 30% grain, and 30% vegetables. You should always make sure they get some fats from either the protein or from added oil as well, but otherwise, that’s pretty much it. If it was your own dog, you would probably be a bit more careful about it, but remember these are stray dogs – they are usually scavenging for garbage, so this is much, much healthier for them, and cheaper than buying dog food. And it’s easy!

The links below give you some more information, but a basic ‘recipe’ would be the following:

Homemade Dog Food ‘Recipe’

• 3 cups (uncooked) of the cheapest rice you can buy – I got 10kg for RM18!
• 400 grams of some kind of protein source (anything, really, the cheapest meat you can find – I bought dry cat food because it is about 1/3 pure protein and is a lot cheaper than dog kibble, and it also means I don’t have to cook the meat which you would otherwise need to do)
• Vege scraps and leftovers – a couple of cups worth.

Cook the vegetables and rice however you normally cook them, I’d just chuck the chopped up veges into the rice cooker with the rice, or you can microwave them (and also cook the meat if it’s raw), then mix it all together. Stir in an egg if you like. Feed the dog! Easy, and much cheaper than buying dog food.

More Information:

http://www.wikihow.com/Prepare-Home-Cooked-Food-for-Your-Dog

http://www.whole-dog-journal.com/issues/15_7/features/Home-Prepared-Dog-Food-Nutritional-Information_20568-1.html

http://pets.webmd.com/dogs/guide/homemade-dog-food

Puppies, free to good homes…

We currently have a litter of 7 puppies who need homes. See the Puppies for Adoption page for more details and lots of cute pictures…