A lovely story for a Sunday afternoon

Remember the lady who brought the three dogs to be spayed at our panel vet, and she had ignorantly double-muzzled the dog?  Remember how a few people had jumped to the conclusion that she had “conned” me or she had acted out of cruelty? 
http://animalcare.my/2010/03/three-female-dogs-spayed-but.html

Well, she contacted me again this morning just when I was about to give a public talk. 


Please read this story until the end…


This lady called me this morning, at 10am, to ask if I could help an injured dog on the Shah Alam highway, near the Proton building.  Apparently, this dog had been hit and it was bleeding.  She wanted to help the dog, but she did not know how to catch it.


I was just about to give a talk and could not help her.  Even if I were free, I still did not have any expertise to catch such dogs.  So I told her I would make a few phonecalls to my friends and see if anyone can help her out. 


After my talk, I was immediately roped into a long meeting and later, had to visit Bandit, and while this was going on, there was a missed call from her. 


I only managed to call her back at 3.30pm, after all my chores were done, and guess what? 


Apparently, the friends I had asked for help had forwarded my sms, and two people had responded to her.  She waited by the roadside for these two people to come to her aid (and the dog’s) but the two people did not turn up. 

Finally, a nice Indian gentleman asked her why she was standing by the roadside, and she told him she wanted to help the injured dog.  The Indian man didn’t know how to catch the dog either.  So this lady asked him to take her all the way to Subang Jaya, to our panel vet (because this was the only vet she knew), and she then took our panel vet to the scene of the accident.  The vet picked up the dog, and now the dog is safe at his clinic. 


My heart is warmed for several reasons:


1.  She went through all this trouble just to help the injured dog.  And while the rest of us were too busy to be of assistance, she did everything on her own, right up to getting the dog to a vet.


2.  She made the effort to call me to let me know that everything had been taken care of, and to thank me when I did not deserve any thanks since I had not done anything at all for the dog.  How very often have I dealt with similar cases where the people concerned do not even bother to follow up. 


Isn’t this a lovely story for a Sunday afternoon? 


Each of us only has two pairs of hands and there is just so much that we can do.  It doesn’t pay to think the worst of others just because of a small mistake they had made out of ignorance.  It never pays to criticise others without knowing the whole picture. 


It pays to see things as they really are. 


It pays to give people the benefit of the doubt. 

22nd March 2010 – I found out this morning from the vet that the poor dog passed away shortly after he arrived at the vet’s clinic.  He was already in a very bad condition.  Perhaps he had been injured for too long, or his injuries were too critical.  May the dog be in a better place now knowing he was cared for towards the end.