Humane Touch Animal Society (Dog Shelter Construction)
Project Summary: Dog Shelter to House 30 Stray Dogs Project Commencement & Completion Date: 5th June to 15th June 2010 Project Location: Kampung Sungai Plentong, Plentong, Johor
Summary: A dog kennel in the form of a long-house with 7 individual cells was completed. The kennel was built in the Sg. Plentong palm oil plantations where the 30 stray dogs are looked after by Josephine and her Uncle on a voluntary basis. Josephine requested a shelter for the dogs from the sun and rain and also from humans that have ill-treated these dogs all their lives. After seeing the condition of the dogs and the sincere selfless love that Josephine and her Uncle have for these strays, we simply could not refuse. .
Background: Josephine is in her late forties and lives in Taman Daya, JB with her elderly uncle Rufus. Josephine used to work as an auditor at several different multinational companies before quitting her jobs to look after the dogs full-time. Her uncle is semi-retired and they both live off the income from an investment that her uncle made in a ship cleaning business in Singapore several years ago.
With an income of about RM3000 a month, Josephine and her uncle look after about 50 to 60 STRAY DOGS FULL TIME! These are dogs that used to roam the streets of JB. The local municipality usually round these dogs up and then they are sent to the SPCA. After about 2 weeks of being “put up” for adoption, they are usually put to sleep as very rarely to people want to adopt these mangy, scrappy looking animals. Josephine and her uncle have been rescuing these dogs and have given them a new lease of life. She looks after about 20 dogs in her house in Taman Daya – mostly puppies and their mothers and the remaining 30 dogs are “kept” on a small piece of land in Kampung Sg. Plentong near Pasir Gudang. The land is part of a large palm oil plantation that is owned by a Chinese businessman who has allowed her to rear the dogs there. They built a make shift shelter for the dogs which was destroyed in a heavy thunderstorm so there is no proper shelter for the dogs in the estate. They roam free, helping the businessman keep intruders away until they hear Josephine’s car enter the estate. She hoots her horn and they all run after her car like the children running after pied-the-piper! We were witness to this amazing display of love, affection and loyalty from the strays.
The dogs are fed once a day by Josephine and her uncle. They collect food from 7 - 8 different restaurants in the Taman Daya area who cook a little extra for the dogs. The food is kept in a plastic bucket at the back of their shops and Josephine and her uncle go to each restaurant daily to collect the food, debone the meat before feeding the dogs both at home and the estate. Josephine has started an Animal Welfare society that is registered with the government which allows her to legally keep all these strays. She has engaged the services of several vets in the JB area to treat the dogs once a week but has to pay them for their services. We later followed them on their food-pick up rounds and personally witnessed them collecting the food from various shops before dropping us off at our cars.
Humane Touch Animal Society (Clean-up Project)
A service project was conducted on at Sis. Josephine’s Animal Shelter in Taman Daya. About 20 youths and 2 senior youths gathered at the shelter in Taman Daya this morning at 9:00am to help clean up her residence. Bro. Hamish Ravindran said, “The original plan was to work at both the farm in Plentong (where she keeps another 60 to 70 dogs) as well as have a team working at her home in Taman Daya where mainly puppies and their mothers are kept as well as stray cats in cages. However, having observed the condition of her home in the morning we realized that we were going to have to focus all our time and energy today to help clean up her house.”
Volunteers removed 4 x 1 tonne lorry loads of rubbish & old furniture from her compound. While work was on going, dozens of cockroaches, rats and other vermin’s came crawling out from under all the rubbish. In total about 5 hours were spent clearing the place and this too only the exterior part of the home. . It is hoped that the dogs and cats will have a better place to live following today’s activity. The next target will be to erect the fence at her farm.
