We welcome you

to join us on a more interactive platform over at our FaceBook Page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Project-JK-Just-Kindness/185453072387?v=wall

For those of you who have already joined in, thank you. We hope to continue our walk together in uplifting the awareness and creating a conscious participation in our animal welfare scene.

And may each encounter with a needy animal make our hearts more tender. Our minds wiser. And our actions kinder.

We look forward to seeing you on Project JK Page.

Watch out for

星期二特写 on 13 Oct at 10.30pm Channel 8.

"The programme is featuring the harsh lives of our street dogs as well as their caregivers"...thanks G for sharing!

Ahhh... and our husky boy takes a breather

Photos of Shin, the rescued Siberian Husky, taking a breather after quite a length of a walk. Had a last minute urge some evenings ago to walk the boy and although I hadn't seen him often enough, he knows when I visit, it means treat and a walk in the park.

After J's effort to bring along ice-cold water for Junior & Ginne on one of their excursions after vet consultation, I've been mindful that in our local tropical climate it is best to bring along water for the dogs however hardy they seem to be. Especially for Shin.

So towards the end of our traipsing the length of the park and back, I poured water over his coat to reduce heating in case his body was overheated beneath the thickness of coat. At least he didn't seem to mind. Water for quenching thirst, for hydration and for reducing body heat.

I've been, mostly, a mongrel person when it comes to dogs. Would you have any tip in caring for or walking an Arctic breed in Singapore (although I'm not exactly supportive of the idea of the presence of such breed in this country) ?

Beautiful walk with Shin.

Remembering some of the strays

whom we've crossed paths with. Much as I hope is not the case, many more are still out there - among farms, in forested areas, construction sites - often out of sight thus out of mind for many urban dwellers.

Thus our efforts to bring to light the reality of the strays living amidst you.

Spare a minute for these lives out there and find a space in your heart to help them, in any little way you can.


Appearing old due to his chronic mange


I named her Frodo

Lovely girl living in the forest with her brother, she has since disappeared.

Born wild

Buttercup - last surviving gal from a first-time mom and later run over and killed by a lorry.

Replying emails

Hi all, it seems that Yahoo mail could be undergoing extreme revisions which has resulted in a number of emails not sent out, be it new compositions or replies. We realise that a few emails assumed to have been sent out remain as half-saved drafts in our Draft folder and even when we clicked 'Send' a few times and a series of success messages appeared, the email was never sent.

For now, I can't even log in to file a feedback to the technical team, hence, if you've sent an email and there are still no replies, after a few days, please resend us.

projectjkteam [at] yahoo dot com dot sg

Adopt a Siberian Husky

THEN... AT POINT OF RESCUE

NOW...

Shin, a 6 year-old male Siberian Husky, was rescued from a HDB home where he was leashed to the kitchen window all day—no walks, no opportunities of socialisation. He slept, ate and defecated within a 1m radius.

When we rescued him in ’08, his legs were found wobbly due to stunted growth and his nails were hooked and long. He was given a mere plate of rice, meshed with an egg a day.

Now after a year of proper foster care, Shin is completely different. He is fattened up, well socialised and lives in a community of other dogs. He is ready to go to a good forever home.

We are looking for an owner who understands the needs of the breed and knows the requirements of keeping a Siberian Husky in Singapore’s humid climate. Importantly, we are looking for a family who is willing and ready to commit to loving and caring for Shin for the rest of his life.

Shin is: 6 yrs old/male/people friendly/loves his walks (cool weather)/castrated/vaccinated/dewormed/groomed regularly/trained of basic commands/a loving companion for life.

We appreciate if you could forward this to your family and friends. Interested parties, do make a careful decision. Contact projectjkteam@yahoo.com.sg

Petshops' profits

Question: can a petshop make money without selling animals?

Or may I rephrase: can a petshop make as much money without selling animals, as a petshop which sells animals?

How moving, how inspiring

From Monty Roberts' The Man Who Listens to Horses

Horses had no answer to the [Genghis] Khan's cruelty, had no voice. But they did have a language. No one saw it, no one tried to see it, but that language has probably existed for 45 million years, virtually unchanged. We should put this into perspective: Humankind has been on this planet for only a few hundred thousand years, and already human language has fragmented into thousands of different tongues.

The absence of communication between human and horse has led to a disastrous history of cruelty and abuse. As a result, we did not gain the willing cooperation of the horse nearly as much as we might have done. Our loss has been considerable--the emotional connection with the horse has been diminished, but so has the performance and work we might have gained.

It is a balance I have tried to redress during a lifetime's work with horses. Happily, that work continues.

Sweetie and pet abandonment

This is Sweetie, presumably 5 yrs old or older. She was abandoned with Shyshy, another much warier dog at a farm. Later, they moved to another farm just a street down and hid themselves away from the street dogs in a storehouse, seeking food from the caretaker. I say 'abandoned' because these 2 mongrels appeared out of nowhere and because they looked/behaved like domesticated dogs.

Sweetie, for one, is lovingly friendly to almost anyone--even to myself, on first occasion; plus, she can do 'paw' and is most willing to offer her paw without one even asking for it. In the first 3 photos above, you may tell it was difficult to take her pictures as she was merrily moving about, her tail swinging in every direction as her caretaker showed me where she was 'hiding'. A few months ago, Shyshy unfortunately went missing and since the afternoon the caretaker discovered her absence, we've never found Shyshy.

Because Sweetie has grown chummy with a patchy-black male dog which we've failed to capture for castration a few times, we sent her for sterilisation upon suspicion that her tummy could be getting bigger. At the vet's, we scanned her for presence of microchip but found none.

I often wonder what part of the Animals & Birds Act actually and practically applies to the act of abandonment. Publicity rhetoric discourages pet abandonment and states that abandonment is a crime. But I've encountered a few major cases in which I was informed my attempts were futile because there were lack of evidences to prove someone abandoned their pets. Several dimensions to this:

• To prove that the pet belongs to alleged owner
• To prove the very act of abandonment
• To prove the owner has intentions to abandon pet

But what happens if a dog is not AVA licensed but is obviously known to belong to the owner and has resided on owner's property for a long time? So how is anyone supposed to be there when the owner releases his dogs from his car? What happens if dog is abandoned by a family friend or relative, not the owner himself, and the former acts on instruction from owner? Is a witness supposed to take a video of it? Even with a photo taking, how credible are images, as the owner can always deny that he was taking the dog out for walk and the images are insufficient to prove this?

Is abandonment an unspoken reality that all of us know about?

There are certainly gaps in how the Act applies to real-life cases and I hope for many of us involved, these questions reinforce the notion that the Act needs to be improved.

For Sweetie's case, we've spent quite a bit on her sterilisation, vaccination, deworming and micro-chipping. If you would like to help chip in, do email us at projectjkteam@yahoo.com.sg. We sincerely appreciate all amount of donation.

Sweetie is a lovely girl.

Coo coo people in animal welfare

I am glad that the majority of animal welfare enthusiasts/activists are genuinely concerned for their animals, but there are persistent pockets of people who choose to expend efforts in assigning blame to others and miss the whole point of, perhaps, why they started out volunteering. So is animal charity truly altruistic? I doubt so.

Or had their cranal network gone haywired?

And this is one big reason why would-be volunteers often withdraw from further commitment, and walk away with the impression that animal welfare people are—no need to hypothesize—coo coo. From complete no-show by club representative to the random volunteer who insinuates and finger-points in email threads: it is no wonder that there is hardly anything such as teamwork, and caregivers often function in silos.

Worse, where blameworthiness is not even in the picture, these individuals may choose to make something out of nothing. And I imagine the female Pomeranian which needs to have the last bark.

Am glad that for the few pals involved in this, we maintain our level headedness and rationally defend what is right for our animals and what ought to be corrected to ensure little impedes our activities.

So we put the noise aside and onward we trudge.

Emailing us

Sorry if you didn't receive any email reply from us. Trawling and filtering through spam mails is a routine and inadvertently, we might have deleted your legitimate email through mass removal. We have too many spams!

Please email us again. Thank you.