Pets R' Us

They say that how we treat our pets reflects how we treat eachother. If that is anything to go by then Cypriot society is a mixture of good and bad. To be fair treatment of animals on the island has improved in the last decade but not as much as it should. There are still animal shelters that house abused and neglected cats and dogs. What has been done to some of them is indescribable. 

Over the  last few years having a pet has become the fashion and a passion. Cypriots squander vasts amounts of money to obtain a pure breed, like a husky for example which considering our climate can only be kept in the air conditioning through the months of summer. The sad part is that most of these dogs are treated unfairly. They are seen as a trophy of some imagined status, like you would treat an expensive car or a designer suit, sitting in the garden on a leash. 

Parents make the mistake of buying their spoilt little brats a puppy as a Christmas present,  a puppy which is abandoned after a year, as an old toy, left tied behind the house on a short rope with little water and a ration of food with no love. That first elation of taking it for walks twice a day and giving it frequent baths has been forgotten.

Hunters are another group of abusers. They train their hunting dogs to do everything they need to do and then let the dogs loose to wander alone. Many are hit by passing cars on the highway or found scrounging for food, skinny and weak. That's how my dog was found anyway.We got her from an animal shelter in Paphos and she was the most nervous and frightened creature I have ever known. She is still shy of strangers and when she hears children screaming she panics. These are what have been left of her sad young years as a puppy and can never be erased.I do believe that things can improve but there is a long way to go.

 There is this village mentality of treating badly those we consider less important than ourselves, so we can feel like the masters. Every living creature has a right to a good and loving home. The owner of the animal shelter in Paphos once described having a pet as having a baby, but a baby that will forever be a baby.Would you not care for and feed a baby? Pets are not toys or trophies, they are something which give you companionship through lonely times and are always loyal. If you give them love, they will give it back a hundred fold.So we should think carefully before we pick that cute brown and white puppy from its cage at the local pet shop.It's a creature, not a toy or trophy.