Yesterday, I attended TAEA’s (Taiwan Animal Equality Association) volunteer training programme that focused on how we are to educate the public about caged and/or chained dogs.
In Taiwan, it is a common phenomenon for people to keep dogs in life-long cages or chains, particularly in more rural areas, to protect their homes, orchards, or factories. They are used as doorbells and security cameras — their frantic, terrified barks when they see strangers would alert the owners of anything that comes close to the territority and land that they are forced to guard. While utilising the dogs’ fear and insecurity as alarms may seem effective, the owners often ignore their barks anyway as the dogs grow to bark at anything that passes. This is not the only unethical aspect of this phenomenon. The food and water given to the dogs are often days-old, moulding, or muddy, with some bowls being dirty to the point where flies and insects have gathered and the dogs were starved to death. The most negletful owners would sometimes not even realise that their dogs have died even days after their deaths, showing just how little they care for them.
After being prolongedly caged or chained, the dogs exhibit aggressive behavior, in which the owners use as excuses to justify their cruel treatments of their pets (although pets may not be the best word considering the way that they are seen as mere tools). This paradoxical problem was resolved by volunteers when they adopted a new tactic. They tried to befriend the owners, offering compliments and easy conversation, so that they would lower their guards. They would then ask about the dogs and whether or not the owners would be willing to let them take the dogs on walks; in these situations, the owners are most likely to agree. Repeating this over a course of a few weeks or months may lead to changes in the owners’ attitude once they realise that the dogs are not as aggressive as they had thought. This is surely a greatly time-consuming act, particularly with so many cases around Taiwan, but the volunteers is determined to change the minds of each owner, albeit slowly, to give the suffering dogs a better life.
Volunteers of the TAEA in the past had received many individual cases in which they attempted to persuade numerous owners to begin to take care of the dogs properly, but realised that this is a futile effort without pairing it with educating the public. They thus began to recruit more volunteers who are willing to educate people of all ages with a particular focus on children to change their minds early on and prevent them from being influenced by negative role models that they may see.
I am helping in with the joint effort as I too think that this is a too-prevalent, often-ignored problem that has existed in Taiwanese society for too long. By reading storybooks and leading discussions with children and teenagers, the TAEA hopes that they would be aware of these situations and how the dogs may have felt throughout their lifetimes, and through that influence future generations to pay closer attention to caged and/or chained dogs and other problems related to animal welfare and rights.
More info about caged/ chained dogs observed in Taiwanese society:
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