As I am writing this I am still reeling with shock from what I witnessed this morning.

I was walking my dog, Cleo, a Labrador retriever, when another bunch of ladies whom I see on my route every morning started exclaiming – oh, there’s the dog, there’s the dog. After a minute or so I saw another dog – a gorgeous golden retriever which was on the loose.

One of the ladies, then proceeds to grab the dog and started dragging him off by the collar. From the cacophony of Cantonese by the other ladies, I gathered that this dog had escaped and their owner – a ‘Jackie’ – was now looking for him. They, of course, didn’t know that I understood Chinese as I don’t look Chinese at all.

Then about a minute or so later, a car pulls up alongside me, and this lady rudely says to me ‘That’s my dog’ referring to Cleo. So I told her quite politely that her dog was up ahead with this bunch of ladies.

I don’t know how she could have mistaken my Cleo for her dog when they weren’t even the same breed or size (her dog was about twice the size of Cleo). Without a word of thanks, she races off in her car to where they were, jumps out of the car and to my shock and horror, she grabbed the dog and started caning it!

I then ran up to them with Cleo in tow, and told her to stop. She ignored me and continued beating the dog as she probably thought I was some silly maid that has been tasked to walk the dog and therefore had no right to tell her what not to do.

I told her several times to stop beating the dog, and she finally replied: ‘I am teaching my dog and it’s none of your business’. I could not believe my eyes and ears. This lady obviously had no clue as to how to look after and care for her dog, and her bunch of friends didn’t seem to think that there was a problem with her beating her dog either. She then bundled her dog into her car and drove off in a hurry.

I think the fact that she brought along a cane in her car to beat the dog when she found it is what infuriates me most. It means that she had planned to cane the dog to teach it a lesson for running away.

What she has failed to understand is that the dog probably got loose due to her own negligence. And that by caning/beating her dog as soon as she finds, she would only be teaching her dog that it is actually best to run away from her.

I know if any of my dogs ever got loose and I managed to find them, the first thing I would do is run up to them, grab them and hug them so hard and probably cry with relief that they were alright and unhurt.

Dog-owners need to understand that a dog’s bad behaviour is due to the owner’s negligence and failure in training the dog properly. You cannot punish a dog for your own failures.

It seems to me that this country is not as progressive as it makes itself out to be. For as Mahatma Gandhi once said, ‘The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated’.