Hi, I’m Chloe and i created this platform to share more about my passion for dogs and what i learnt throughout the years after slowly exposing myself to pet store dogs, shelter dogs and stray dogs.

Just like any other typical young girl who was clueless about shit, it was my childhood dream to own a golden retriever. I think I have the television programmes to blame for glamourising them so much that influenced me into wanting that particular breed. My birthday wish since I was a child and I meant a really young child child every year would be the same “I wish for a dog”.

Finally, my parents bought me a dog, a shih tzu whom my mum named Pepper when I was 7. In retrospect, I wish they knew about puppy mills and didn’t buy me a dog. I wish I knew more about adoption. I wish i could go back in time to tell them I shouldn’t be getting a puppy at that age because I barely knew how to even take care of myself let alone a puppy who needed as much attention as me, a 7 year old kid.

Fast forward all the months of foolishness and ignorance and not having the ability and knowledge to realise my role as Pepper’s caregiver because wtf do i know as 7 yo kid, nothing. I didn’t even know how to clear up the dog’s poop. I only knew i loved being with the dog. It was my best friend but as a kid, i didn’t have the power to say no when my mother returned Pepper to the pet store due to their lack of time to train the puppy.

I forgot to mention, during this whole time, I was staying at my grandma’s and I was rearing chicks since I was 5 years old. I reared chicks my entire childhood and most of them died because I overfed them. I was so scared they were hungry so I will always feed them even after my grandma told me not to because she has already done so. Everytime I overfed them, they died and my dad will get me a new one from the market. I didn’t understand the value of a life and I felt sad when they suddenly disappeared from the box because my grandpa would rid them by the time I woke up but that sadness didn’t last long because I would get a replacement soon after.

I remember the day when my parents drove me to return Pepper and I fought so hard to cry but i eventually wailed like a bitch in the car and all my mum told me was that he is too naughty. My sadness lasted slightly longer for Pepper compared to the chicks but it didn’t last very long too because I felt that being sad was a weakness in the past.

A year later, the same birthday wish surfaced and I got a puppy again. This time a miniature schnauzer that I named coco. I was obsessed with Coco Lee at that point of time so I named my new furry prized possession after her. Coco had coprophagia also known as the poop eating habit and again, in my powerless disposition, Coco’s place in our family was shorter than Pepper’s and I was told she had to be returned to the pet shop because she was stupid for eating her own poop.

I know at this point, you must be very infuriated because trust me, if i could go back in time to scream at my parents for being so irresponsible for a life, i would do it within a blink of an eye. Like any other corporate slave, they worked to live and lived to work. They liked dogs but they didn’t love them enough to learn how to be a good owner for the dogs.

Couple years later, same wish that I wished out loud (again)…

My dad being the dad he is, he will try his best to give me what i want so here came Brownie, my little sausage dog. His time with me was even more short lived but this time he passed away with lung cancer as I was told. Again, 10 year old me knew nothing about being a fully responsible owner and my grandaunt was taking care of him for/with me while i was staying at her house for the holidays.

After Brownie, i didn’t dare say my birthday wish out loud anymore but I always wished for a dog still. A dog that can be with me for the rest of it’s life. Not a dog that I couldn’t be fully responsible for.

It was not till I graduated from primary school that I felt I was finally more capable of being responsible for another living thing. I brought up the topic of getting a dog to my parents once again. After a full year of negotiation, my mum agreed to let me get one if I scored well for my end of year exams in secondary one. I worked so hard the entire year just to score a high grade to get my dog. Remember how I said I’ve always wanted a golden retriever and apparently i’ve never gotten one. One of my aunt had two and that was my end goal. I did my end of the deal only to have my mother tell me that buying a goldie was over her budget. So she suggested adopting. My dream of getting a golden retriever was crushed (or so I thought) but whatever, I was just excited at the thought of getting a dog again plus my mum told me there are golden retrievers there to be adopted.

We went to SPCA the week after but the dogs there were too big for my inexperienced ass and my parents were just too afraid of not being able to handle a dog bigger than a small sized beagle because (idk what’s their problem…) I guess they knew that they could no longer return the dog like they used to now that I’m older and have more determination in keeping the dog so they wanted a more manageable size but I really wanted a big dog.
As we were about to leave SPCA me feeling very disappointed I didn’t see any golden retriever there, we saw a dark grey medium sized poodle. My parents set their eyes on him immediately and it was actually his 1st day out of the quarantine place into the adoption space. He wasn’t in the adoption hall for long because we picked him up 2 days later and we named him Tattoo. Tattoo because like a tattoo, once you ink, you have it there for life and Tattoo meant that he was going to be a permanence in our family because I’m not going to allow nobody to return him.

A few weeks later, we went back to SPCA because I still had hopes for a golden retriever. God finally sent me that golden retriever via SPCA and i named him Prince.

Tattoo was the most well behaved dog ever and we were told he was abandoned in the park by his previous owner and the only issue he had was when at any one point of time, if we went out as a group of 4, we had to stay with him as a group of 4. None of us could leave to go buy a drink because the moment he saw anyone of us walking away from the pack, he would bark. That, to me was so precious. I was even more determined to earn his trust to tell him, we are not going to abandon him ever.
Prince was surrendered to SPCA by his owners but he was more nonchalant about everything. He had a very happy go lucky vibe and he even taught Tattoo how to escape home when it rained. Tattoo being the goodest boy that he was, he only escaped twice but both times he regretted his escape and stood outside the gate while Prince went gallivanting in the neighbourhood. He escaped the main gate so many times when it rained and no matter how we locked the doors and windows he always managed to squeeze his way out or jump out of the gate. One fine day, he ran into one of my neighbour’s house and they called SPCA because they didn’t know he belonged to us and SPCA took him back. My mum went to SPCA to claim him back but he didn’t want to leave with her.

She picked me up after school to break the news to me and still I felt that crying was a weakness, that sadness was a weakness. I didn’t allow myself to be sad and although I did raise my voice and wanted her to bring Prince back, she was the highest authority in the house and I was so angry with her refusal. I didn’t have much say because my dad was working in the day, my brother and I were both in school during the day and she was the only at home with the dogs so as much as I wanted to be the one feeding them and taking care of them full time, I was burdened by the need to go to school. So for that, I didn’t get to have the last say in this matter. Though, I called SPCA to ask about Prince and they told me that he was adopted shortly after into his forever home which was at least comforting for me to know.

As I spent my time with Tattoo and bonded with him, I wanted to learn more about how I could improve myself for him and compensate him for the time he was betrayed by his previous owners so I read a lot about dogs and it eventually linked me to reading about puppy mills. I was horrified and felt extremely guilty because ALL my previous dogs were the epitome of the product from puppy mills. I also felt f stupid for insisting on getting a golden retriever because Tattoo was just as much as a dog as a golden retriever and the breed didn’t matter that much to me because the horror that came with the breeding was so much more impactful to me.

I wanted to thank SPCA for doing what they do in helping dogs like Tattoo and Prince so when I was 15/16, I went around my school one day and asked my friends from the different classes to give me $1. Without questions, they handed me that dollar which i then explained that i was going to use this to donate it to SPCA. With everyone’s help, I managed to raise slightly more than $200 within that day and I went over to SPCA after school to make the donation. it was my very first fund raising effort that I wholeheartedly participated in and I knew then that I wanted to do more of these animal related fund and awareness raisers so here I am today.

The dog that really taught me what love is Kimchi, my little docker. I sacrificed so many things in life for her but I do them so willingly just for her. She showed me love in so many ways and she was and still is the constant in my life. She’s basically my shadow and she has never not waited for me to go to bed with her.

I also adopted a chow chow before and named her Chow Chow haha from an abandoned breeder’s farm. She was the mother dog who was forced to reproduce so many times her nipples were literally hanging off her body and she was just dragging them on the floor. She was a really peaceful dog and even though the vet gauged her age as only 7 years old, she looked like 17 years old because of how much torture she went through. Her body was weakened with all the autoimmune diseases she got through her breeding days and I had to put her to sleep eventually because she had maggots in one of her wounds but she didn’t have enough red blood cells to go through with the operation that was needed in order to rid the maggots and the infections she had in her organs. My fondest memory of her was our daily walks. Every night she would be so excited to go for her walk, so i take them out for their walks in twos. I had four dogs at that time, Tattoo, Scooby, Kimchi and Chow Chow. She and kimchi would go first and 3 out of 5 times, she would stop and plong herself mid way whenever we were making the uturn back home because she doesn’t want to walk anymore. I had to carry her heavy bones and walk two streets home while struggling to keep Kimchi from tugging the leash and yanking me forward. All i told myself every single time I carried her back home was “you better not fall. you’re not going to give Chow Chow another wound” because of her alarming low count of red blood cells, i just didnt want to be the one who caused her another injury. I hope she found her peace in heaven because i cried like a bitch the day I had to look her in her eyes and choose to let her go. Fucking maggots.

The dog that opened me up entirely to seeing mongrels in a new light was Sonic. Before him, there’s Scooby whom my parents adopted and I must say that I’m very happy my parents are more educated these days and more into the whole adopting culture because we have all learned it the hard way, that the only difference between a store bought dog and an adopted dog is the money involved because how the dog behave eventually lies in the hands of the one holding the leash, not the one who’s being leashed.

Idk if it was because of how Sonic saw Kimchi as his example but he grew to be very sticky to me too which I really like. My mum’s friend found him with 6 of his other siblings as a little tiny puppy caged up by AVA near her house and she rescued them. Texted my mum to check on her interest in adopting one of the pups and Sonic was meant to be my brother’s dog initially because we thought having a dog will help my brother adult faster but him being the boy he is, he was not as affectionate to Sonic as I am with Kimchi and every night, Sonic was just looking to have someone play with him so eventually I took sonic under my wing and he has been sticking with me and Kimchi ever since in which my brother is ok with because he knows Sonic is having a much better life with me haha or so I say.

I’m that person who would rather hang out with my dogs than head out to shop or splurge on myself because there’s honestly no greater joy in seeing my dogs happy and having a good life.

Ok, that part about me and my dogs is done and so fast forward to last year, whenever I came over to my house while it was still in the midst of the renovations, I’d always see different packs of stray dogs on different days crossing the roads and I told myself that once I move in here, I want to feed them everyday.
To put it out bluntly, I’m part of the reason that the place they used to see as their homes have been eradicated and turned into my home and i feel helpless knowing that and I want to do everything I can to make up for it. I hate to say it but these buildings that we are now calling homes are the reasons why they have lost theirs. I wish there was a way we can continue co-existing in the same plot of land without humans being so ridiculously selfish and demanding in wanting to rid the strays because we took their space and we should learn to accept that they will still be here and not want them gone just because we come up with our own assumptions about them and feat them based on our assumptions.

So i guess, here’s a little background about me and why I’m doing this and i hope this inspires you to be kinder to animals, especially the ones without a roof over their head to call home.