the last few days i've been busy with community stuff. on thursday night, i attended the ethnic communities listening forum that is organised annually by the ethnic communities liaison staff of hamilton city council. it's quite a useful event, in that there is an opportunity to provide feedback on a majority of issues. the mayor was in attendance as well as a few city councillors, although the former did look quite bored with the whole thing.
i don't know that i gave any particularly useful feedback, other than wanting something to be done to stop sky city casino being open all night, and asking for the council to have 2 funding rounds during the year instead of only 1. as to the former, it appears sky city already have consents for opening all night - these were obtained quite some time back. so i'm not sure that the council can do anything much about it. and the latter was brought about by the fact that the funding applications have to be in by march, so i didn't get an application in this year for the next national interfaith forum because we weren't anywhere near organised by then, and next year's round will be too late given the event is in february 2012.
today was the workshop i'd organised for muslim women, as part of my taku manawa commitment. we had someone from the human rights commission & a police officer both there to talk to the women about how to access support from those organisations if they were harassed or abused in public. i thought it went well, there was a lot of positive feedback.
but the day didn't end so well. as i was driving home on a dark and rainy night, a black dog jumped in front of my car & i hit it. it was awful, the poor thing was yelping in such an awful way. luckily someone else driving past stopped to help out, and someone living nearby came to help. we couldn't locate the owner for a bit, until an old lady driving past stopped to see what happened. turned out it was her daughter's dog, so she took him in her car to visit the vet.
i'm personally not a fan of pets, never having had one. and i'm not good with animals generally. i can understand why people would want one (well theoretically i can understand, emotionally i just can't connect with the idea), but one thing i feel strongly about is dogs. i just don't think it's fair to keep dogs in a city. they aren't city animals - unless it's those little ones that look more like guinea pigs than wolves - because they need space and the freedom to run around.
i hate to see dogs tied up or fenced in, in the sense that it's unfair to the dog. of course i'm glad to see them tied up or fenced in regards my own personal safety, because i really do hate to be anywhere near them. and it really angers me that this particular dog wasn't tied up or fenced in. there is no way it should have been free to randomly run across the street, for me to hit it at 50kms. it was so truly awful.
the poor old lady kept apologising to me. even as i was driving off (once the dog had been settled in her back seat), she came back to me saying she hoped i wasn't upset. at that point, i just wanted her to get back in the damn car and hurry to the vet. she said a couple of times that the dog had been very naughty, which is sheer nonsense. the dog just did what dogs do: bound around. it's the owner who has been naughty by not securing it properly.
i'm sure the animal is going to be ok. i wish i'd taken her number so i could ring to be sure, but i was too shaken at the time and i wanted her to hurry. but if anyone is remotely interested in taking advice from me, it would be this: if you must have a pet, get a goldfish and put it in a LARGE aquarium with a lid on it, inside your house. animals shouldn't be caged up or fenced in. dogs should be on farms. if you're keeping one for security reasons, an alarm is much cheaper and just as effective.
4 comments:
That sounds really hard Anjum. Thank you for posting about it too.
I really like dogs and would love to get one. But I won't until we have a fence around our property to keep it in, and we'll be able to give it the attention required.
My brother in law is a real softly for animals and he found a stray dog who he looked after and it became his dog. Unfortunately it ran out on the road when he thought it was safe inside and as it was still a puppy it died. He was devastated and adopted another dog. He's now moved to Australia and will be getting the second dog moved over there when he can afford it. He's learnt a very hard way about the importance of keeping them safe, and he really is a wonderful dog owner. It's funny though, because if he hadn't found that stray he probably might never have got a dog at all.
thanx julie. saving a stray animal that can't manage on it's own is certainly a kindness. but otherwise, cities are designed around the needs of people rather than animals, which is why i find dog-ownership problematic. i suppose if you have a big backyard and access to spaces to run around, then it's not so bad.
to the anon who left an abusive comment, a couple of things. i am in my own country, you moron. if you can't cope with the fact that nz'ers aren't just of european or maori extraction, then that is entirely your own problem. you're the one who needs to leave the country, because you have shown that you are unable to adapt to a changing environment, unable to accept other nz'ers as equal to yourself, unable to accept that every nz'er has a right to talk about issues in their own country, unable to realise that in this country we are allowed to have differing views. you seem to want to live in a mono-cultural, mono-racial dictatorship where only your race has any rights. unfortunately for you, nz is not that country. so get your passport ready, and i will personally drive you to the airport.
and as for calling me a bitch, really? is that the best you can do? you really are a sad, pathetic excuse of a human being, and if you want to waste more time writing abusive comments, go ahead. they don't bother me (i'll be deleting without reading anyway), and no-one else is going to be seeing them. but it's best you waste your time on comments here, than abusing people face to face, so please do feel free to continue.
Sorry you have to put up with wastes of space like Anon. Yes, I met an awesome dog called Stella outside my favourite pub (of course she couldn't tell me but I read her tag!) Rang the mobile number on the tag - douchebag owner is in the pub. Dog not tied up, outside, expected to wait. Now this dog was obviously a saint, but it's a built up area and NO dog can resist if a cat should pop out on the other side of the road. Arse!! (I would have stolen her, but two is my limit :-D)
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