Is Feeding Stray Animals Wrong?
Dedicated to the many people of humble means who feed stray animals daily.
Irina Echarry
HAVANA TIMES — In Cuba, animals are at a disadvantage. No law protects them and there aren’t many humans involved in the struggle to get one passed. There are many of us who think one is needed, but not enough.
A few days ago, on the television program Pasaje a los Desconocido, I saw a documentary about an animal rights foundation in Spain. Thanks to the testimonies of several people, we found out this foundation takes in, cleans, vaccinates and cures animals of any illness they may have, to put them up for adoption later.
For years, I have been fantasizing about having a space where I can do exactly what I saw in the documentary. I would also add a greenhouse to it. But reality is against me. I live on a fifth floor and share my apartment with others. I don’t have any prospects of earning the money I need to trade the apartment or buy one on the ground floor, nor do I have any friends who meet the two basic conditions needed for this: a place and a dream similar to mine. It’s probably a coincidence that all of us nut-jobs working to alleviate animal suffering are doing it out of the kindness of our hearts, with very few resources or places where we can care of these animals. Thus, even though seeing them get better is its own reward, the terrible feeling of having to leave some on the street stays with you.
The documentary presents us with a well-equipped and spacious local with a fair number of workers caring for animals. In Cuba, a poor country, the locale needn’t be as sophisticated. With good intentions, we’re already half the way there – I know this from experience. However, when the media touch on the issue, they emphasize the abandonment of animals and neglect to mention that anyone can help these animals, that one needn’t be rich or belong to an important organization.
Nora, the director of Aniplan, was a guest on the show that aired the documentary. There, she explained the importance of the Animal Protection Law in Cuba. The program, which has a wide audience, could have been used to recruit people and offer hope. However, it proved the exact opposite because of the statements made by a veterinarian from the dog pound. After defending the work of the institution and speaking of stray animals like a plague to be eradicated, she addressed the public to tell them one should not feed stray dogs or cats, for animal care also involves vaccination, hygiene and a home.
It’s true that a home for these animals would be magnificent, that vaccination and medical attention are necessary, but we all know that disease flourishes in an immuno-depressed organism. Daily practice has taught me that food works almost like a magic potion. At home, we have cured or at least held back the deterioration of several dogs.
One day, we opened our door and saw a little white and black dog full of sores, giving off a bad smell, frightened and a bit hysterical. Because of her whimpering, my mother named her Sarita Montiel. We healed its sores and began to feed it. The change was drastic. She is now healthy and, even though she now has people to care for her, she spends most of her time on the steps, like another neighbor.
Blackie had guarded the market his entire life. There, he would bark and fight to retain his position as the alpha male. He grew old, other dogs began to win the fights and its body gradually yielded to malaise. Its skin became covered with pustules and worms began to thrive on its back. We decided to help it, even though people kept saying “that dog was as good as dead.” Bearing that cross and Blackie’s refusal to move, we began taking off the scabs, spread ointment and vinegar on its skin and feed him. It was an ordeal finding him every day, as the dog would hide so no one would bother him. The best part was that other people (the same ones who had left him for dead) became involved on seeing the progress, helping us find him and feed him. A few months ago, he died of a heart attack, but we managed to give him more than a year of life and improve his mood.
Dulcita had shown up at the apartment building all sad, scrawny with fledgling sores on its skin and legs. She wasn’t in serious condition, but she got worse in the course of days. When the pain started, we took her in to help her. Thanks to the affection and food we gave her, Dulcita became beautiful and vital and decided to stay. She goes down to the street, pees, socializes with other dogs and then comes back up to be let in again.
These are but a few, concrete examples aimed to demonstrate it is not such a difficult process. We have helped a number of animals without much space or money. We have even found owners for them. I know other people who do the same. It isn’t good for the struggle to raise awareness in society with respect to animal suffering that an evening program should present us with an expert who calls a humane practice a “mistake.” What isn’t right is letting living creatures grow ill and die around us and doing nothing about it.
Seeing their recovering and feeling their affection is thrilling. The documentary brings to mind a quote by Anatole France that I’ve always liked: “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”
Why would we expect a regime that cares naught for the people of Cuba to care about the poor dogs. Yes, their neglect brings shame upon Cuba, but that is due to failure by the Castro family regime to adopt laws providing protection. Most of us who live there eventually manage to sleep through their howling at night. We do quietly feed one of them, but it is a national problem and disturbing.
Edith “Wrong” = John “Badpoor”. Even lower than your usual stuff Mr. Goodrich!
That is correct Edith. As one whose home is also in Cuba, I am unable to find any change whatever in the living conditions and in the political system of the regime. There is a key difference between the views expressed by Peter Melheron and those of Mr. Goodrich. One provides a view that is based upon innocence, the other Mr. Goodrich, is not concerned about Cuba and Cubans, but only about the opportunity to express his cynical warped view of the world to others and to state boringly and repeatedly that communist and socialist regimes are not working because they are practising “state capitalism” rather that pure Marx/Lenin theory. Any time now you may expect him to quote one Noam Chomsky who like Tariq Ali is a professional bletherer. As you know, TeleSur TV provides Tariq Ali with opportunity to express his far left political views to Cubans. But then he, like Mr. Goodrich, lives in a free society (London, England) with free expression.
Mr. Goodrich it is increasingly evident that you have never read the US Cuban Democracy Act.
Section 1708(b)(3) of the CDA, 22 U.S.C. (section) 6007(b)(3) directs the President to: “take steps to end the United States trade embargo of Cuba when two conditions have been met:
First; that the President has made a determination, and reported it to congress, that the Cuban Government has taken five steps identified in (section) 1708 (a) including free and fair elections conducted under international supervision, permitting opposition parties ample time to organize and campaign for such elections, showing respect for the basic civil liberties and human rights of the citizens of Cuba, moving towards establishing a free market economic system, and committing itself to constitutional change that would ensure regular free and fair elections.
Second: that a Cuban government has been elected as a result of such free and fair elections.
CDA concludes: “To maintain sanctions on the Castro regime so long as it continues to refuse to move towards democratization and greater respect for human rights” and “to encourage free and fair elections to determine Cuba’s political future.”
So Mr. Goodrich which part provides what you say is: “stated purpose was to ruin Cuba economically.”?
Don’t those blinders get rather inconvenient when you have to face facts?
Not only are you without knowledge of Cuba never having been there, but you make fatuous statements without basis. Ignorance on your part obviously provides bliss!
It may well be that you are opposed to open free elections, that you would prefer that others have to continue to exist in penury, that you concur with the views of ‘Che’. But don’t cloak those hidden thoughts by the pretence that you care about Cuba and Cubans.
The Castro family communist regime has had ‘a chance’ lasting 57 years. As you know Peter, there is a saying that: “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” I can understand that as a tourist you gained little knowledge of the reality of Cuba which is a dictatorship under which it is an imprisonment offence to criticize the regime. Parents who teach their own children in their home anything which is counter to communism can be jailed for up to three years. Please be good enough to explain why it is that you think that Cuba is now a “country of the free world.”? What do you know for example about the CDR? What do you know about the activities of the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of Cuba? Remember that Dr. Ernesto Guevara de Serna Lynch said that:
“TO THINK AS AN INDIVIDUAL IS CRIMINAL.”
My home is in Cuba.
You’re wasting your breath, Tany. These guys have never lived in Cuba. If they’ve ever visited it has been short term and they’ve never ventured outside their safe little tourist bubble. They’re woefully ignorant of day-to-day life.
What happened with the subject being discussed? Any cuban theme is always politicized…what a drag…i am a cuban american who lives in cuba. My father being an american who lived in cuba for many years…i grew up there and still live there… I despise americans who read books and theorize about cuba or go as tourist and arrogantly think they know the system. Even though cuba has been embargoed for many years it is the cuban government responsibility for the lack of freedoms and poverty of the people. Cubans are second rate citizens. So those of you who live in a free society and can freely express their sympathy and defend a leftist dictatorship i say why not have Obama rule us until eternity?do stop being so hypocritical…and remember we should be talking about strayed animals
You are quite the sophist. Your pseudo intellectual blither blather does not hold up. The “embargo”, prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, was a paper tiger. During that time Cuba was firmly in Moscow’s orbit. As such there would have been very little trade to speak of with the U.S., ….were their no embargo. (example, the U.S. only sold grain and some non-ferrous metals to the Soviet Union). That means that for over three decades the Soviets subsidized Cuba’s failed economy, mainly through Moscow’s supply of low-cost oil and its purchase of Cuban sugar at inflated prices to the tune of many, may billions of dollars.
It is a fact that Cuba’s failed Communist-castrista system has always needed a sugar daddy to stay afloat. First their was the Soviet Union, then the Venezuelans, and now…..the U.S.?
….how them apples?
Thank you for your compassion. I left part of my heart with the many street dogs on a recent trip to Havana, and now I support Aniplant. I know foreign adoption is not the answer, so I help the only way I can.
“… You need to read something about U.S. foreign policy’s effect on Cuba before posting what you did…”
No, I do not. All I have to do is go to the jail to visit my young neighbour and take him some food and fresh bedding. His horrible crime?… Being in a punk band.
Your opinion that Cuba is a free country is ludicrous and your comments are embarrassingly ignorant.
If you ever actually visit Cuba drop me a line an I’ll be happy to take you on a real tour.
“… now that the shackles of a nearby have been taken off…”
I don’t know what planet you live on, but you really should visit Cuba before making such sweeping statements. Cuba is almost as locked down as it ever was.
And….you evidently suffer from the same imperial historical amnesia as Moses in necessarily “forgetting” about the 54 year old U.S. embargo whose stated purpose was to ruin Cuba economically .
This gives hypocrites the chance you have to criticize Cuba for conditions that any rational person knows are caused by an empire who always has used such tactics to overthrow any system but free enterprise capitalism.
Don’t those blinders get rather inconvenient when you have to face facts ?
Thanks for a really good response to an historically ignorant poster.
For Eden “Wrong”
You need to read something about U.S. foreign policy’s effect on Cuba before posting what you did .
Try reading just the introduction to “Killing Hope” (available for free on the net ) before posting about things of which you obviously know so little
The Castros should never have made Cuba a “baby” in the first place!
I’ve never heard of a baby taking 50 years to learn to walk. In the meantime the Castros destroyed my Cuban cultural hematite. This baby went from crawling and straight to a wheel chair!
Hello Eden,
A deprived baby can only crawl before it can walk, the Batista regime did not allow it, so lets give the Castro government a chance, now that the shackles of a nearby have been taken off???
To see suffering and not do anything to help, that is bad enough. But to speak to others in a widely viewed documentary and advise people not to do anything as simple as feeding starving, oftentimes sickly animals – that is a professional in need of education. It’s too bad that more vets such as the one in this documentary aren’t required to volunteer services to rescue organizations.
“… Cuba is once again a country of the free world…”
What in the world are you talking about?! LOL
Cuba is once again a country of the free world, so now let the people of Cuba show their support for animals in general with the same sincere kindness they have shown me as a tourist.