Animal Welfare in the Philippines – Tina’s love for animals

From guest author: Kristine Vicencio

Kristine is an animal advocate and guardian in the Philippines. She just started a blog to raise awareness about animal welfare in the Philippines and to share her stories – and we at PackPeople believe that her idea needs to be shared and supported! Thank you for reaching out, Kristine.

Here is her first article for PackPeople: 

I never thought that maintaining a blog would be challenging. First off, I do not have a camera or a mobile phone with a camera, therefore I cannot record memorable experiences that I can blog. But then again, I remembered the main reason why I decided to blog: I blog because I want to make a difference, I blog because I believe that I have something to say. I blog because I want to.

And then, I was able to meet the epitome of animal lovers in the Philippines. Her name is Tina Alviar Agbayani. Well, I met her on Facebook, and I was inspired by her since day one. Maybe you are wondering why I consider her the epitome of animal lovers in the Philippines -Tina is not only a mother to her children, she is also a mother to her dogs, chinchilla, turtle and iguana. All her dogs are rescued from different animal shelters, and that is one thing that I love about her. She can actually buy purebred dogs, but she preferred to save lives. I can say that she is one of the kindest mothers on earth, because she is teaching her children how to treat animals with respect. I am sure that having a quadriplegic dog is not easy; some people will just abandon a dog with this condition, or worse, they may even euthanize her. But not Tina. She decided to keep Bianca and gave her a chance to live like an ordinary dog.

Tina is teaching her children the value of compassion, and she is a good example of a responsible parent. Imagine, she was able to take good care of her children, she was a mom to her dogs and to other creatures in her household, and she is even volunteering some of her time to animal shelters. Tina deserves to be in my list of “Dog People of the Month.” She is indeed an inspiration to all. Because of her, I was able to realize that dog lovers should not expect animal shelters to do all the rescues and stuff, there are times wherein we need to step up, and do things on our own. Animal Shelters will not be able to save all the stray animals, but if all dog lovers will stand as one unit to accomplish a goal, then nothing is impossible.

About Kristine: I used to be an animal shelter volunteer, however because of the nature of my job, I was forced to quit. But because I am really passionate about making a difference in the lives of animals, I decided to blog about my passion. I live in the Philippines, and in our country animals are considered as the last priority of our government.

Though we have animal shelters, they do not rescue dogs. Well there are times they do, but most of the time, they don’t. They have this maximum of 30-60 dogs per shelter. There are even times where in, if there is a dog in need and we call the animal shelter, they will not do anything. So, to help the dog, we will use Facebook to disseminate information and will ask the nearest person to the dog’s location to rescue it first, bring it to the vet, while we will contact our animal lovers group all over the world to ask for donations. As of now, we already have 10 rescues, and 4 have already been adopted.

I blog because I wanted to raise awareness regarding the proper way of becoming a dog guardian. I would also like to raise funds so that i can put up my own no kill animal shelter, it’s kinda ambitious but i believe that if a network of people who have the common goal will work together then nothing is impossible.

I have just recently learned that Mandaluyong City has put up their own Animal Shelter, and they also need all the help that they can get, if you are located near Mandaluyong, please be kind enough to visit the dogs and provide some help.

Pictures was taken from Tina Alviar Agbayani’s Facebook account :). If you have any questions regarding my blog, feel free to email me at akvicencio(at)gmail.com

LIKE Kristine’s Fan Page on Facebook here. Visit her blog ‘Everything is better with dog’s hair’ here.