JP/Dina IndrasafitriFor some people, Valentine’s Day might mean a chance at wining and dining, but Dina Artha Tan will celebrate this year’s holiday by collecting and selecting photos to raise money for her four-legged “kids”.
She does have a 3-year-old son that she caters to, but when she says “kids”, it usually means the meowing and barking beings she keeps at home as well as at various veterinarians’ clinics.
As the founder and director of Fauna Welfare, a crisis and adoption center for animals, Artha is currently raising money through an owner-and-pet photo competition to build a new temporary shelter for unwanted cats, dogs and other animals.
The photo competition involves a minimum registration fee of Rp 10,000 (US$1.10), which is to be used for building a shelter to help accommodate the growing need for a place to house all the animals Artha has rescued.
The petite woman keeps six dogs, with several of them looking for foster parents, at her home in Karawaci, Tangerang. Her mother’s home in Depok has been housing stray cats. Artha also keeps some wounded and sick animals at various vets.
Nicky, a golden retriever, is the latest addition to the pooches at her house. According to Artha, a member of Fauna Welfare bought the dog after seeing it kept in a cage for months by its previous owner. Nicky, who came along for the interview with The Jakarta Post, is currently looking for a new home.
“I was actually planning to take Nicky this afternoon to see a family that might want to adopt him, but … we’ll have to take it slow and introduce him first,” she said Sunday morning at a sidewalk café near her place.
Artha currently works in the telecommunications sector, but almost all her time outside work and family is dedicated to Fauna Welfare. Her weekends usually consist of visiting vets and taking dogs to potential adopters.
Fauna Welfare has its roots in online forum threads about animals in distress. After several cases in which thread participants ended up arguing over the best methods for rescuing these animals, Artha decided to set something up on her own.
With an already developed network, Fauna Welfare became a community in 2005, and, later on in 2009, it was registered as a foundation under the name Yayasan Dinartha.
It currently has seven core members, several of whom are vets, and hundreds of members in several cities. The organization actively campaigns on various animal rights-related issues through the media such as Facebook, Twitter and its website www.faunawelfare.com.
Several times the organization has made its way into the news for its stance toward animal rights-related issues.
One recent case was the alleged killing of dogs in Palembang, South Sumatra. According to Artha, a local newspaper ran a story on the matter.
She and several other volunteers flew to Palembang to help capture stray dogs as part of the campaign to provide alternatives to possibly killing them. Thanks partly to their efforts, the city now has a small temporary shelter for stray dogs.
“Some say [the killing] was a hoax, but if it was really one, how did it made its way to the papers?” she said.
Fauna Welfare also supports other causes such as the legal proceedings surrounding the death of three St. Bernards allegedly because of a pet shop’s substandard practices in transporting the dogs from Jakarta to Yogyakarta at the owner’s request.
Artha at times visits kindergartens, bringing animals to introduce to children to overcome the perception that dogs and cats are dirty. Herself a Muslim, she said she often has to face complaints regarding her keeping dogs, which some Muslims consider unclean.
At least 50 dogs have gone through Artha’s care over the years. A regular scenario is her receiving news of a wounded animal on the toll road somewhere and her driving to the location to pick the animal up and take it to a vet or to her place.
At first, she tackled all the calls herself, but as Fauna Welfare grew bigger she urged other members to do the same.
One member, for example, was at first reluctant to save a wounded dog on the toll road. After exchanging text messages, the woman finally agreed to take the dog to the vet on her own. “Although she did it grumblingly, she then proceeded to rescue more animals afterwards,” Artha said, laughing.
Fauna Welfare relies on donations to pay back the money used for medical treatment for the animals, buying neglected or abused pets, and other activities, and oftentimes Artha has to dig into her own pockets as well.
Although her parents did keep pets when she was a child, according to Artha, it is hard to pinpoint where her particularly large supply of affection for living creatures comes from. Artha merely remembers a few incidents from her childhood. “We had a dog and one day it got out from the fenced yard. I was going to a warung near my house and saw a crowd gathering and yelling. When I came near to see what it was, I saw my dog tied to a stake and rocks being thrown at it,” she recalled.
Artha, who was still in kindergarten then, ran frantically to shield her dog from the rocks. Finally her older sibling came to help her and shooed away the crowd.
In another incident, she went down into a sewer to pick up a puppy she saw when she was heading to her elementary school. She found herself trapped in the sewer, unable to climb up because of her height, until someone saw her and thought she had fallen in.
Artha’s husband Stanley said he supported her animal rescue work.
“I still remember the first time we chased after a dog … It went inside [fenced] land and she went under the fence. The grass was taller than her and she was like ‘Where is it? I can’t see.’” he said, laughing.
Thanks to Artha, Stanley even managed to conquer his fear of dogs over the years.
“I am still [afraid] if it’s a stray dog,” Stanley said, laughing once again.
Their son has also developed affection toward animals, including insects. He sometimes reprimands Artha’s mother for spraying bugs with insecticide, Artha said.
“Some of my relatives ask me why bother looking after these animals when there are plenty of human beings who also need help … [I answer] there are also plenty of other groups and organizations that work to save street children and the like. But who looks out for these guys?” she said, gesturing at Nicky placidly watching the passersby.
