My walk to work takes me past a couple of dumpsters for neighborhood use. One morning as I passed, I noticed the sound of a puppy's cries. When I looked over the side of the dumpster I saw a tiny tan puppy, hardly a week old and the size of my hand, straining against the weight of garbage in which it was stuck, yelping for someone to take notice. It was just a puppy, but my emotions tore at me as I stood there listening to its little yelps.
I wanted desperately to reach in and rescue it, but the problem is that the attitude toward dogs is much different than I'm used to seeing in America. They live on the streets, find food in the garbage heaps, run away from boys who throw rocks at them. A few people keep them as pets, but in general they aren't valued at all. So when unwanted puppies turn up, they are simply thrown onto the garbage heap with the rest of the trash. A woman walked by me with her child, saw my distress and stopped to sympathize with me and the cries of the little dog. "Terrible, terrible," she said, lending support to my perspective that life, even an animal, shouldn't have to suffer. But there was nothing we could do. Even if I had saved it, I don't have the resources or time to take care of it. Picking up that one helpless little puppy wasn't going to save puppies from being thrown into dumpsters because the problem is rooted in people's attitude toward dogs.
