A big hello to all, I recently joined the group as many of you may have noticed from my numerous posts. I spent a lot of time reading over past posts and wanted to voice some of my views thought and suggestions and introduce myself a little. I am half Irish, half Cypriot Turkish and I grew up in the UK so Im very familiar with the cultures of these nations as regards to animals. There are good and bad everywhere but some of the problems here stem from what people were taught, lead to believe and shown. In the history of this culture animals were mostly not known to be kept indoors, they were looked at as animals and animals were believed to be kept outside. People and children would see a stray dog on theyre walks to and from school or work etc (remember there was much more open land then) and out of fear they would run screaming, this would often cause the dog to follow chase and some ended up bitten. This started a cycle of teaching theyre children not to go near dogs etc they would teach theyre children things such as dogs will bite them, if an animals hair went into a childs mouth it could kill them, animals carry diseases etc This got carried on into many generations, even in 2014 I still am explaining to people in theyre 20s and 30s that a dogs hair in theyre mouth isnt good but it wont kill them! Anytime I meet anyone thats afraid of dogs I simply ask why? More often than not they had done the wrong thing when in the company of a dog and the dog reacted naturally. This is an education problem. In those days people didnt have flea/tick treatments, available vets nearly everywhere and yes pets would become ill or neglected purely due to these people being uneducated with regards to animals. Dogs especially are still regarded as an animal instead of a pet by a lot of people but this is slowly changing... I dont blame the people that taught or learned these types of things because they knew no better. The important thing is now the long task of re-educating! If you explain to even one person thats terrified of dogs or thinks they are dirty that they are not dirty and that theyre is no need to be afraid if they respect the animal and learn how to behave when around them then you have educated one person, that person will educate another and like a chain effect things will start to change. I see many dogs and cats in need of homes but after the post starts to run off the news feed they disappear... I suggest a place, photo album, page or something of the like where each dogs pic can be put so that people can easily see who needs a home and who has been homed. Today after reading posts and talking with Sarah Jane Purcell she kindly informed me of things that are needed and welcomed for the famagusta compound as I asked. There are many dogs there, I dont have the means to go out and buy hundreds of things but I went out and bought large bowls, I could only get 8 bowls but thats something... If we all did just a little it would amount to a lot. I dont want thanks because those 8 bowls and anything else I can help with will go to those dogs in my brothers memory... We lost him when he was 13 to a non cancerous brain tumor. His dog joined him in heaven some years later at age 13 also. He loved animals so much as do we and I am not only trying to help because I want to but also in my brothers honour because he would be doing this if he were here... God Bless you all, look after yourselves and the animals and thank you for creating this group that I am so happy to have found...
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 19:13:39 +0000