The Killing of Dog Killua is The Tip of An Animal Abuse Iceberg

The recent killing of a beloved golden retriever has sparked outrage across the nation. A neighbor was caught on CCTV chasing the dog before he killed it. The video spread virally on social media even reaching the eyeballs of the inutile politicians who govern the Philippines. Their solution? More laws!!

https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2024/03/21/2342174/killing-dog-killua-slammed

Animal welfare education should be mandated for elementary and high school students after the killing of Golden Retriever “Killua,” according to Sen. Grace Poe.

On March 17, Camarines Sur resident Anthony Solares killed the dog, claiming that Killua was aggressive.

The act was caught in a closed-circuit television footage posted on social media by Killua’s owner Vina Rachelle Arazas. Solares was seen hitting the dog as it ran around trying to escape.

The dog’s remains were later found in a sack.

“I am heartbroken and enraged to hear of the mauling of Killua, a golden retriever. Mr. Anthony Solares admitted to slaughtering Killua, claiming that the dog chased his child. However, his actions, which were captured in a CCTV video, were fraught with excessive violence and showed that it was Killua who was being chased,” Poe said in her privilege speech on Tuesday.

In Senate Bill 2458 that Poe filed, the “Revised Animal Welfare Act” shall include mandatory animal welfare education in the curriculum for primary and secondary education students.

“We hope to pass this bill soon and put an end to despicable incidents such as what happened to Killua,” she added.

Members of the House of Representatives condemned the killing of Killua, with lawmakers calling for amendments to the Animal Welfare Act of 1998.

“I think it would be the best time for us to revisit this law. The maximum penalty of imprisonment for the violation, for instance, on the killing of an animal is six months to one year of imprisonment, with the penalty or a fine of not exceeding P100,000,” said Ako Bicol party-list Rep. Raul Bongalon.

He also urged the Philippine Animal Welfare Society to raise awareness of laws against animal cruelty.

“What should be done? Perhaps we can empower our (local government units) in enforcing this law. It is because they are the ones at the grassroots level,” House Deputy Speaker David Suarez told legislative reporters at a briefing.

“I would understand maybe if he scared the dog. But to kill the animal already speaks of the motive, that there is really an intent to end the life of that animal. To me, it is tantamount to straight-up murder,” said Davao Oriental 2nd District Rep. Cheeno Almario.

It should not need to be said but, "Laws DO NOT prevent crime."

The fact is animal abuse happens all the time in the Philippines and no one cares. The only reason anyone care about Killua is because of the CCTV footage and the pictures of him celebrating his birthday in a tuxedo bib. For every Killua there are other unnamed animals who's death goes unchampioned.

Take for instance the abuse of a cats. 

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/regions/901314/cat-found-shot-in-head-with-an-arrow-in-davao-city/story/

A cat was shot in the head with a bow and arrow in Davao City, according to the report of GMA News Regional TV One Mindanao on "State of the Nation" Thursday.

The cat was rescued and rushed to the veterinary clinic by a concerned citizen for an emergency operation.

The surgical procedure was complicated as the arrow hit the cat’s brain. The operation on the cat was eventually declared successful.

The person who shot the cat remains unidentified.

Meanwhile, a house cat was found allegedly bludgeoned to death at an alley in Naga City.

Based on statements from residents, there had already been multiple incidents of house cats being killed within the area.

Barangay officials are working on identifying the suspect behind the string of cases of animal cruelty.

In Davao someone shot an arrow into a cat's head. In Naga City a cat was found bludgeoned to death being one of a number of killed cats in the area.

In Cavite cats at the local pound had to resort to cannibalism.

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/regions/901107/cavite-pound-probed-over-cat-cannibalism/story/

A barangay-run animal pound in Dasmariñas, Cavite is under investigation for animal neglect after a video surfaced of cats eating the bodies of their fellow felines.

In a report by Darlene Cay in Unang Balita on Wednesday, a concerned resident made the grisly discovery after she went to the pound to help her friend find a pet cat.

(I became confused because it was the first time I saw something like that. I was very angry and upset. I ended up crying.)

Yvette suspected that the cats in the pound were not adequately fed, so they could do nothing but eat each other. Based on the video, some cats appeared weak, their water bowls were dirty and there was no food inside their cages either.

Yvette said they talked to the barangay chairman, who agreed to transfer the cats to a shelter, but he said she was shocked when the 20 cats were released the next day.

Still, the barangay captain maintains they did not abandon the cats and fed them twice daily.

(The truth is that I have two caretakers of the cats but we still can't watch them for 24 hours, so when they noticed the cats being fed they would end up fighting.)

The people at the cat pound suspected that three cats died because of fighting. They said the more aggressive ones ate the dead cats.

According to the veterinarian Dr. Ferds Recio, extreme hunger may be the reason for the cannibalistic behavior. He said that cats are natural hunters.

(It can be due to starvation since they don't have any food. It is also true that they will kill their fellow cats for them to eat. It doesn't mean that one hundred percent they have nothing to eat, so they will kill their partner. It is possible, but it is not one hundred percent sure.)

If it is proven that cats were neglected or abused, the barangay officials can be held responsible for violating the Animal Welfare Act.

There are also reports from time to time of tricycle drivers being apprehended for collecting dogs set to be slaughtered and eaten. The point here is that no law is going to stop animal abuse in the Philippines. Abuse happens because some people simply do not care about the well being of animals. 

This issue is not much different from the weekly slaughter of current and former political officials. Once in a while the violence is recognized at the national level and passionate speeches condemning the violence and calling for an investigation are made in Congress but for the most part it is an endemic problem about which no one cares. Stopping animal abuse in the Philippines will take a huge cultural shift and that is nowhere in the cards at this point. 

SM's Jungle Safari in the Mall is Actually Bizarre COVID-19 Propaganda

What will they think of next to get people used to the idea of wearing face masks and face shields while out and about in public? SM recently erected a display of jungle safari animals that doubles as COVID-19 propaganda.

Take a look at Mr. Baboon here.

The sign is a bit obscured by the light but it reads: 

Mr. Baboon washes his hands regularly for 20 seconds to keep the virus away.

Where does he get the anti-viral soap? Does he wash his hands every time he scratches his big red baboon butt?

 If Mr. Baboon doesn't want to catch the virus then why doesn't he stay home like Mrs. Monitor Lizard?

Mommy lizard is staying at home to watch her kids. Mom cooks delicious meals to make sure we don't go out.

I like the seamless shift from third person to first person. Monitor lizards eat bugs among other things and wouldn't you know it but the same people pushing the COVID-19 face masks scare are the same people who want everyone to eat bugs and much less red meat all in the name of going green and saving the environment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/t-magazine/eating-bugs-food-restaurant.html

You know who does not eat and never will eat bugs? A lioness.

I make sure I wear a mask when I need to get food.

Have you seen anything more stupid in your life? This is bad propaganda. Why would a lioness, who needs her large teeth to catch her food, wear a mask when she needs to get food? She wouldn't!! She and her cubs would starve.

Let's not forget social distancing propaganda. That task is left to the meerkat, one of the most social animals on the whole savanna. Talk about irony!

We make sure we keep a 1 meter distance between each other.

A 1 meter distance? How will the meerkats do that in the crowded burrows in which they live? They won't. 

There are no other signs for the remaining animals. For instance we do not get to see the innermost thoughts of this elephant who has a face mask on his trunk.

Seeing as how elephants use their trunks to drink water maybe he is thinking:

Please help! With this face mask on my trunk I can't drink. I am going to die!

This zebra might be thinking the same thing.

Imagine being a wild zebra and going to the local watering hole with mask covering your snout and mouth so you cannot drink and you cannot smell any danger on the wind. You would be dead. All of these animals would be dead if they were wearing face masks. 

Believe it or not there is one animal, besides the monitor lizard, which is not wearing a face mask. The monitor lizard is secluding herself at home so that is understandable. However this giraffe is without excuse!

Does Mr. Giraffe think being so tall precludes him from any chance at getting the virus? Actually none of these animals are at risk because the climate they live in is not favorable to the virus.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54418613

That's part of an article about why Africa has not been as hard hit by COVID-19 as everywhere else. If these animals could read I would direct them to https://cv19.fr/eng/english/ to learn more about the ineffectiveness of face masks at stopping the virus.

Now perhaps this jungle display is just harmless fun meant to get the message out all in the name of safety and perhaps not. What is certain is that this pandemic is being used as a means to further the economic and political agendas of those who run things.

https://time.com/collection/great-reset/

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to think about the kind of future we want. TIME partnered with the World Economic Forum to ask leading thinkers to share ideas for how to transform the way we live and work. 

"The future we want?" Who is this "we?" Do you attend annual Bilderberg meetings or prance about in the woods at Bohemian Grove every summer? I know I sure don't. 

Don't think the Philippines is out of the purview of the World Economic Forum. It is not.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/archive/philippines/

If you want to know more about the Great Reset and the Fourth Industrial Revolution and what may be coming in the future then I direct your attention to the following video. 

Abandon Kittens I Have Rescued

As far as I can count I have rescued 10 abandoned kittens over the past few years. Small kittens. Little mewling things. The first one I found wrapped up tight in plastic bag on the side of the road. I heard it crying when I went to take out the dog for his morning duties. That kitten died because my helper fed it spoiled milk.

Likewise the next two cats I recused were also found on the side of the road in a box and killed by the negligence of my helper. These two kittens I found when I was on my morning run. I ran home with them of course. It's not too difficult to run with a cardboard box but it's not so easy either.

The next two kittens I rescued were found in the middle of the road next to a cemetery on my morning run. This was Good Friday 2019.

Despite my best efforts one of the kittens died. I am not sure what was wrong with it but it stayed real thin and small no matter how much it was fed and did not make it. The other cat, the black and white one on the right, grew up just fine and even nursed on one of the dogs who had recently given birth but whose puppies were weaned. They became good friends.

Shortly after these kittens were rescued I found another kitten mewling in the darkness of an early morning while I was on my run. I took it home but sadly the Belgian ate it! Quite literally chomped it's face off. I was very upset at her. That dog suddenly died a few months later from ehrlichiosis.

A few weeks ago I was again out for a morning run when I heard the familiar mewling of a kitten.  I found her in the tall grass by the side of the road, picked her up, and carried her home.

This little calico I tried to get rid of but it did not happen. At the home I placed her the other cats attacked her. So she is stuck here but she likes it. She had made friends with all the dogs and she even had a male cat friend who was one of the kittens I rescued on Good Friday last year. But for some reason that cat disappeared recently. It's been two weeks and no sight of him.

On August 7th, I was out for an afternoon run and on the return route home I heard the familiar mewling.  Lo and behold in the tall grass on the side of the road I found a tiny kitten and ran home with him.

She was very tiny but had been eating and adjusted to life in the yard with the other dogs and cats. Sadly she did not grow and ended up dying.

Two weeks later I was out on a morning run and despite my ears being plugged with earphones I again heard the familiar cry of a kitten. But I decided to keep going and stop on the return. There were two kittens. I wrapped them both in a shirt that was in the middle of the road and ran back home with them.

These kittens are very healthy and will surely grow to be fine cats. They are inseparable sleeping, playing, and eating together.

On September 29th I woke up late because my alarm did not go off. At 4:45 I threw on my gear and began my morning run.  On the return route I heard the familiar mewing of a kitten and stopped to look for it. Much to my disgust this is what I found:

Someone tied a kitten inside a bag and tossed it on the side of the road amongst the sugarcane. I was unable to successfully flag down a tricycle to take home so I ran the final 2 miles trying my best to keep the kitten secure. She could not have been there more than 15 minutes as I did not hear her cries when I passed the area where I found her the first time.

Back at home she cleaned up pretty good. Underneath all that filth was a beautiful calico coat.

Here she is with two of the other cats.

It's impossible to say where these kittens have all come from. The first one I found tied up in a bag was certainly put there by a human and is an instance not just of abandonment but of unbridled cruelty. The others seem to have been either lost or abandoned. I have yet to find any abandoned puppies. So why all the kittens? I think Filipinos put a lesser value on cats than on dogs. While cats are good at catching all the vermin which run around at night dogs can alert their owners to the presence of burglars. In this country the protection of a dog, a fence, or both is essential. The protection of a cat? Not so much.

Construction at the Veterinary Clinic

This post is a continuation and update of two previous posts. It fits right in with the post about unsanitary veterinarian clinic practices and happened the same day I took a stray dog to the vet as chronicled in the post about dog cruelty.

To get right to the point there was on-going construction in one of the rooms housing dogs.

Clearly you can see they did not remove all the dogs from the room before they started work on the ceiling. The cage in the foreground has an open top so there is nothing to protect the dog from falling debris. One of the cages is even being used as a table to place materials and tools. 

In these pictures you can see more of the work being done.

These men are installing a new ceiling. New wooden panels. Once installed they are painting them with a roller which means paint is being flecked about as the roller moves. I have done this kind of work and know that flecks of paint will inevitably get all over the place yet there are no tarps covering the animal cages left in the room. You cannot see in the picture but there are a few cages sitting outside in the back. Why not move the rest outside or move the remaining cages to one side and work that half of the room and then shuffle them back to finish what remains?

Construction, even this kind of light construction, always has hazards. I have helped install drop ceilings and painted ceilings before and it is a fact that debris and paint will fall all over the floor. It cannot be helped. Perhaps the amount of falling debris and paint might be small and non-lethal but that is completely beside the point. Those falling hazards are dangerous for these dogs. Especially the dog who's cage has an open top. Who knows what will happen? That is why safety measures are taken on all construction sites. But not in the Philippines. In the Philippines safety consistently takes a back seat.

At the Veterinary Clinic

Recently the UN released a report stating that 3 out of 10 hospitals in the Philippines lack basic toilet facilities. That is only people hospitals. What about animal hospitals? I can testify they are horrendously unsanitary.

For instance here are two clinics that do not have proper disposal containers for used needles. Instead they use plastic bottles.

If you don't know, this is what a proper needle disposal container looks like:

It is not true that just any plastic container is appropriate to be used for needle disposal and for a veterinary clinic to use a bootleg bottle which can be easily punctured shows that they are not interested in investing in proper medical sanitation devices.  Why not use a cardboard box? Or a yellow shopping bag from SM Supermarket? It would be just as unsanitary, unsafe, and wrong.

Each clinic does reuse those bottles rather than dispose of the whole bottle which is even more unsanitary because that means they are keeping a bottle which has accumulated goodness knows how much bio-waste. It also means someone has to shake out all the needles through the tiny hole which is wasteful and dangerous work if they get pricked. Where they dispose of the needles at the end of each day I have no idea.

At one clinic where I took my dog I asked to use the CR and was directed to a room in the back which contained this horrendous sight:

Absolutely disgusting. There is no reason this place is lacking a proper toilet and sink along with soap to wash up afterwards. Not to mention the walk back to this room was dangerous because the floor was slippery with dog piss and faeces. Dogs are kept in large cages with no bottom and they are allowed to mess all over the floor. The whole area stunk awfully. 

This is only two clinics. How many other veterinary clinics in the Philippines are as disgusting as this? Likely quite a few. 3 in 10 perhaps? 

My Helper Killed My Kitten

A very sad day here at Philippinefails.

Two mornings ago during my morning run I found two lovely and abandoned kittens. So I scooped them up and ran home with them. They were a bit much to handle but luckily there was a cardboard box in the grass.  Even though it was wet it managed to stay in one piece until I arrived home.

Romulus and Remus

The kittens seemed healthy enough. They had no noticeable damage. I put them in a safe spot and gave them some milk. I entrusted their care to the helpers we have. There are plenty of dogs here and these kittens were driving them crazy.

All day today I had not heard any sounds from the kittens so I finally checked them at about 4:30pm.  They were no where to be found in the large area I put them in. Then I noticed a small area covered up.

Dramatic reenactment

That is the base and the floor of the animal carrier the kittens were in in the previous photo. I quickly removed these pieces and there were the kittens one of which was dead!

Dramatic reenactment

I was very angry and shouted myself hoarse. The kittens were placed there on purpose to protect them from the dogs while they were let loose to do their business in the yard and then they were forgotten about. The milk bowl was completely empty which means they had not been fed today.  I do not remember hearing them cry this morning which means likely they had been there since yesterday afternoon. 

The details don't matter.  What matters is that I entrusted these kittens to my helpers and now one of them is dead and the other is very weak, both eyes are closed instead of just the one, and it smells absolutely horrid and is likely to die soon. 

AND THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME THIS HAS HAPPENED!!

Years ago I found a kitten tied up in a bag!!! Only a heartless monster could do something so cruel. I took in this kitten and trusted it's feeding to my helper, a guy who is no longer with us, and he neglected the feeding, ended up feeding it rotten milk instead of making fresh milk, and it died. All because he was neglectful and did not wish to do the job I was paying him to do.

I want to keep things in perspective here. This is the Philippines. In the Philippines the average person does not care about dogs and cats. It's almost a guarantee that the kittens I found were abandoned by someone who did not want them. Truth be told my helpers care more about Facebook and Youtube than anything else. But generally speaking Filipinos do not care about animals. This observation was made 300 years ago and it still holds true even now. Everyday I see it confirmed. Today I know it for a fact in a very personal way.

26. They do not care for any domestic animal—dog, cat, horse, or cow.

http://www.philippinehistory.net/views/1720sanagustin.htm

Who let the dogs out?

It is necessary to have a dog when living in the Philippines because of all the breaking and entering that occurs.  They are not a sure-fire theft deterrent but nothing ever is a sure thing.  And when the dogs you have to protect you property are out and about they sure aren't going to be protecting your property.

So who let the dogs out?  The Filipino who owns them!  

None of these dogs are strays.  They are all out on the prowl because either the owner did not secure the fence or opened the gate to let them run about.  Why would a loving dog owner not secure their fence or purposely let their dogs out to run about in the street all day? They wouldn't. That's just one way Filipinos let the rest of the world know they are not kind and loving towards animals.

Loose dogs are a menace. They dig through the trash and spread it all over the neighbourhood. They get in the way of cars. They poop everywhere. They growl and bark at passersby. They breed uncontrollably. Their bodies become mangy and disease infested. They bark all day and as they stroll about they set off all the other dogs who are secured behind fences. 

But who cares right?  If you don't like it leave! Certainly Filipinos must like having a country full of loose dogs on the prowl. Otherwise they would secure their dogs and their fences.

Fighting Cocks

Fighting cocks are everywhere in this country.  After all, cockfighting is the national sport of the Philippines. In order to fight cocks you have to breed and raise them so what better place to set up huge fighting cock breeding grounds but in a gated residential community.

It's cock-a-doodle-do all day long.  They don't just crow at sunrise.  They crow whenever they feel like it. Even at 2am!  Such a cacophony of noise along with the motorcycles, tricycles, fish vendors, barking dogs, and loud music and televisions coming from each house.

In the second picture you can see they didn't even bother to put up a fence around the area.  Instead they sit out in a chair all day and watch their cocks.  They also have two dogs tied up to trees.  How is that supposed to stop any of the stray dogs from stealing a chicken at night?  

Its really a waste of space.  The land could be used more productively by growing crops or building a house.  Build a house?  In a gated residential community?  No let's just raise fighting cocks.  

The are in the fourth picture doesn't just have fighting cocks.  There's also a goat and a few turkeys.  Of course the only real turkeys are the men who fight cocks and decide to raise them in residential areas.  

But it's not just residential areas.  It's everywhere! Hens and cocks are literally all over the place in this country.  Everywhere there is a spare area they will tie one up and build him a little hut. Makes no sense.  

But that's the Philippines.  Nothing here makes sense.