Wildlife supports our existence on earth

Wildlife supports our existence on earth

That is damn serious and no longer any more an imagination.

Journal Science on half the planet should be set aside for wildlife – to save ourselves as published on 13 September 2018.

 So say leading biologists in an editorial in the journal Science  as “ If we want to avoid mass extinctions and preserve the ecosystems all plants and animals depend on, governments should protect a third of the oceans and land by 2030 and half by 2050, with a focus on areas of high biodiversity.”    It’s not just about saving wildlife, says Jonathan Baillie of the National Geographic Society, one of the authors. It’s also about saving ourselves.

So I would like to add my own observations as a caretaker of friendly and homely dogs a long time ago especially since 1990 in Kota Kinabalu. I am not the owner of dogs but God is the owner of all animals especially in personal context the sort of “best” friend dogs.  I feel that it is not right to connect dogs as best friends rather it is Jesus Christ as our best friends forever.

I can fondly recall all the time that in 1966 on my return to Labuan for the first ever after first year’s study in Sabah College, a furry dog came to greet me even before I could leave my car when my father fetch me home from the airport. Then that dog just disappeared soon after as I did not see it again. That very impressive image still stay with me now.

Since that memorable day of encounter I had not done much for dogs until in 1990 when my landlady brought me a local mixed breed German shepherd puppy and since then it has been “dogging” for me as a hobby like some people do golfing etc.

In my dogging experience, I have gained much insight into the life of dogs in the homely habitat and not in dogs shelters which are for strayed or problematic dogs.  I strongly recommend that all kids should grow up with some puppies. For enhancing dogging experience, I would say it is not enough just to have a few dogs but a family of dogs from puppies to adult ones to gain valuable experience and enjoyment money cannot buy. .

There are so much to gain for our enhancement of daily living.  It may put us to shame that there are people out there that claim that we cannot physically communicate with God.  It is really our human problem that we not in sync with God our Creator. God is always speaking unceasingly and it is us as frail human beings with great pride of self-righteousness not hearing them.  God would hear us and do according to His Will as we claim to pray to God. He may and may not choose to return our prayers in physical voice of God.  God may just do it even without our knowing it.

In a particular case for me over a sick dog and I asked God if I should treat it by calling the veterinary doctor to incur some costs. Almost instantly, the small stern and strong voice told me “the money you have is also for the dogs.” With that I called up the veterinary doctor and that dog was treated and healed.  I have also prayed over dogs with high temperature and the temperature just went back to normal instantly.

With such ’unexplained’ experiences, it would impress on me that God would care for His creations and creatures and possibly care more for unexplained scenarios that He cares more for His animals especially dogs than human beings.  Animals can be sinless while human beings choose to be sinful at times.

So the key word as started in this letter is “extinction” for animals and human beings too.  We are so often told of the extinction of wild life (flora and fauna) and yet we are too helpless to stop that with acute deforestation the world over.

Now in Malaysia and especially Sabah with the dog’s head in its land outline, dogs are heading to extinction especially in our own home environment.  It is a sadly an episode with the largely disappearance of once pristine forests in Sabah and replaced with mono crop of alien oil palm and in the back ground of worsening climatic temperature, it is a domino phenomenon that the flora and fauna would soon be depleted as exacerbated by human greed. With the accelerated depletion of flora and fauna, what chance have human beings to continue to exist?  With rising temperature uncontrollable, would the “rapture” so often being mentioned in the Bible be a thing to come?

Really not many people are concerned to mitigate the climate change and rather our activities unimpeded are sure to engulf us in total destruction like it or not. Very few people are interested in my proposed program #EcoGeneration to save the degraded earth to save ourselves.

I hope that this letter can reverse the still on the way to extinction of companion dogs as “engineered” by ourselves with whatever regulations of the relevant authorities failing to see the real picture over the recent decades.  What separate city and kampong/village living is the gap in flora and fauna.  Isn’t it a great blessing in natural terms that we wake up with the crows or calls of the cocks in the morning?  So similarly it is great blessing in the still or dead of night to hear some barkings or sounds from dogs for all the purposes thereof.  All these divine sounds should be music for our souls on earth. Like it or not, these have been calls from the wilderness of sort and soon maybe no wilderness calls for ourselves.

It is just unimaginable, that there is such “hatred” for dogs and when dogs are created by God, and so those dogs haters are anti God.

I think there are plenty cases of cruelty against the dogs and such serious issues are not properly addressed by the Animal Welfare Act 2015 where penalties of fines and jail sentences are stipulated.  The most recent one was a heinous one against a dog in a steel factory committed by a worker and the company concerned had promptly apologised for the crime and nothing proceed to the trial under Animal Welfare Act 2015.  Why such a disappointing precedent?

With the passing of the much “hated” in the Chinese calendar now come possibly another “hated” animal the pig.  However both these animals have largely brought a lot of benefits to the society at large, with the dogs we know it is an utility animal to solve emergency and also crimes; with the pig apart for energised food and in the medical field it is known as guinea pig.

So God in His creation of the earth, animals came first and human kind is ordered by God to take care of the animals.  So if we hate dogs and pigs, we are anti God.

If dogs and many animals go extinct, we would miss their specific sounds sort of from the wilderness.  If there are no dogs, you would not hear them howling at demonic intrusion.  My dogs do daily howling day and night and to me that is “music” to my soul.  It is written in an ancient book that dolls of dogs are buried in the ground of front door to ward off evil.

Be reminded that in the Noah time, animals were so important that they were kept alive in the great flood.  Today, we are sort of reduced to less than animals when we fail to do a duty to God.  Dogs in the housing areas have dwindled so much that extinction is a reality.

Joshua Y C Kong 15/2/2019