Yesterday, a dog training class was held by the registered volunteer of our animal control.
He arranged this class in his town and a professional trainer came to teach training voluntarily.
Now the people who want to learn training dogs are increasing, and I hope those project would be held in other towns or cities.

But... I think it's true that Japanese people are not good at dog training.
I guess they might not know the "proper timing" to give dogs "command" and "reward".
When the owners said "sit" and their dogs sit, many owners don't say their dogs "good" immediately, so their dogs would be bored and move around, then the owners say "No! Sit, sit!!" again, and their dogs won't hear the owners voice any more...

 This is the dog adopted from our center. She has been trained for 3 months and now has become a very smart dog!

Yesterday, I heard a phone call from a JR station official.
He said, "A stray dog has been chained in front of the station since this morning and no one has come to pick him up, so will you come and take him?"

It was already 5:00 pm and we were preparing for leaving the office, but I had to go to the station and pick up the dog.

When I got to the station, it was nearly 6:00 pm.
A man was there with the dog and the station official. He said, "It was me that chained this dog this morning. I found this dog on the way to the station, and I chained him because I was afraid he could be hit by a car. Then, I had to hurry up for work and got on the train."

This is the photo the man took in the morning. The dog is Shiba breed, and very friendly.

And this is the photo I took in the evening. He looks so nice sitting and waiting his owner.

The station official said "I thought this dog was a kind of HACHIKOU, waiting his owner patiently".
But unfortunately, his owner didn't come.
I think maybe his family is looking for him, because he was running with his chain, and he is very good, cute dog.

The man who chained him kindly walked with him to find the owner around the station for 30 minutes, but he couldn't find.
Many passengers came around to see the dog and said,
"Haven't your mother come yet?"
"I'm very sorry he can't go back home."
"I'll ask my neighbors if their dogs are running away." etc. etc...

Anyway, no one had come to pick him up, so I had to take him to our animal control center.
We'll keep him at least one week, but if the owner would not come to see him, then...!
.I hope he would be able to meet his family soon.

Yesterday, I visited a president of neighborhood community association of a town in Hikone city.
He asked us if there are some good ways to reduce stray cats around his area.
Now we hear those kinds of requests everyday. Sometimes there are a feeder to stray cats and the number of cats increase, making many troubles between the feeders and neighbors.

Actually, local government doesn't have any rules to regulatory those who feed stray cats, we don't have effective way to reduce stray cats and the troubles caused by them.
We used to tell people "Don't feed stray cats", but now we have realized that it doesn't work at all.
People who feed stray cats think they are poor, so they can't stop feeding. Then, those people would feed them secretly and problem would not disappear.

Now we recommend TNR in those case. This time I tried to explain him how TNR would work to solve the stray cats problems and to make both people and cats happy.

Fortunately, he was very kind to animals and said he would try to discuss about TNR with neighbors.
Then he said, "I adopted a dog from your animal control office 2 years ago." and showed the female dog, named "HANA (it means flower)".

HANA grew up a very cute dog and is trained well, I was very happy to see everyone in her family love her very much!

I've not updated my blog almost half a year.
I've been too busy since I moved to another office in April and I haven't had time to even sit in front of my PC everyday.

Now I'm working at the animal control center of prefecture.
We accept dogs and cats almost everyday and destroy them, though we try hard to adopt as many dogs and cats as possible, but unfortunately there are still hundreds of dogs and cats that would end their lives in miserable.

We have some education programs here to promote "animal welfare" among people.
"The week of animal welfare" is one of those events held by national government.
It's from 20th to 26th September every year and we usually hold the festival on a day of this week.

This year, we held it on 26th (Sun), and this would be the last festival we hold at our facility.
Because our budget is cut every year and we don't have enough money and workers to continue this event from next week.

Fortunately, we was able to hold the last festival on a very clear, comfortable, fine day in autumn.
It made us forget these hottest summer days we had never experienced ever before!

We had an educational speech, dog training class or some other corners to tell people how to live with their animal happily and how the lives of animals are important for human.

I hope all dogs and cats would be happy with their owners, and the number of abandoned animals would decrease.

Yesterday, I went to an old woman who asked me to trap a stray cat to spay.
Our group was registered as a city volunteer 2 years ago and she was the first client after we appeared on the city news magazine.

I visited her house and saw the black female cat, and thought that this cat was one of those we trapped and returned after spaying 2 years ago, but she claimed that this cat was another one, because her neighbor said this cat had given birth under old woman's house in last October.

She doesn't become forgetful - though she often says same thing - she remember many things clearly.But she didn't go out of the house and she didn't confirm the kittens by herself.
She stays in her house all day long and she can do her stuffs by herself.
But she has a respiratory disease and has to take on ventilator every time, so she can't go out alone.

 That's because I wondered if the cat really was another one...?


Another reason I thought the cat was same as we trapped before was that she was very cautious with the trap and she would never enter it.
I waited 30 minutes after setting the trap.The cat came and walked around and ate all food in front of the trap, then she sat next to the trap waiting the old woman came and feed her.
I doubted the cat knew of the trap!!

But the old woman kept going that cat was another one, so I waited more than 1 and half hour, but she ran away at last. So I had to give up yesterday.

I listened to her stories while we were waiting. I like to hear stories of old people, because they have had many experiences I never knew.

This time, she told about a dog she had kept by 5 years ago.
The dog was a male, Shiba mixed one and 17 years old when he died.He became senile and had many diseases.He walked around the house in the midnight, crying oddly, and failed to use his toilet.
The old woman had had hard days to take care of him.Finally the dog died on December 31th, the busiest day in a year here in Japan.She called a pet funeral company on the New Year's Day,  cremated the body and buried carefully as same as a human.
She said all family had cried and they still visit to his grave every year.

Then her grandchild wrote a composition about this story at her junior school, and she won the prize! Her teacher impressed with the composition very much and it was on the air at the local radio.
It was Great!! The girl had a very important experience, I think.

In Tokyo, I went to watch a movie after the meeting, which name was "Dog, Cat, and Human".
This movie shows the current situations about dogs and cats in Japan.

The movie starts from the scene that an old woman visited the director and asked him to film the movie about the situations around dogs and cats, animal control and animal welfare in Japan.
She had worked with rescue of stray and abandoned cats for more than 40 years, but she was old and she knew she wouldn't continue that work, so she decided to appeal people about poor dogs and cats here by making a movie.
Then, the director started the work, but he had not been interested in animals ever before and he didn't have any ideas about the problem of dogs and cats, so it took 4 years to research and make the film.

Though he knew the very sad and poor facts here and there, but he doesn't focus on the poor side, doesn't emphasize the terribly conditions, he only showed the facts in detached tone and he never said who or what was bad.
That's why I liked this movie.

I'm an official worker in charge of animal control in the municipal government.
So I know these situations the movie showed very well, and I know how hard it is to accept dogs and cats only to destroy them like some of the official workers in this movie do.

The reason why I started to help TNR is not only for cats, but also for my job.
I don't want to accept kittens next year, so I catch the cats and bring to the vet clinics 100km from my home almost every week (it's cheaper anyway).

A woman in the movie said in anger "why Japanese people throw away their dogs and cats in the mountains or river sides easily?", but it's because they know the animals will be destroyed when they were brought to the animal control offices, so people choose the chance in a million that they could survive instead of apparently death, though it's quite wrong ideas in fact.
They should know their acts are only to avoid their responsibility and to suffer abandoned animals longer until terrible death, without food, attacked by crows, or hit by car,etc.

I don't know what impressions people who watched this movie had, but if someone wanted to help abandoned cats or spay/neuter their cats after watching the movie, it's great!
Anyway, I believe the situations are getting better a little by little every year.

Today, I and Susan, the leader of our NPO, were invited to the barbeque party held by ARK(Animal Refuge Kansai), the most famous organization of animal rescue here in Japan.

It was clouded and sometimes started pouring suddenly, but not so bad to have bbq.
There came many people.Most of them were dog owners who had adopted dogs from ARK.

Dogs looked like veeery happy to run around in dog run space.

We ate many vegitable, sawsages, potatoes, and lamb meat.

The place where we had bbq was bought by ARK last year, to make another new sanctuary.
Mis Elizabeth Oliver, the president of ARK, is the top leader in the field of animal rescue in Japan.
She has been struggling with this poor conditions about animal control in Japan, since she first got to Japan from England more than 30 years ago.
We met very nice people here and got back home with so much satisfied!

But there is one problem...if we had the party like this and invited people who adopted cats from our shelter, they wouldn't be able to take their cats with them...
Can you imagine to let many cats play in the field?

Maybe you know, Feb.24th is the Spay Day International.
Our cat rescue group also attended this canpaign, and did a small event.



We passed out fliers to people at the JR Hikone station and MinamiHikone station.
Because it was on Sunday, there were not so many people walked by.
But it was "The Cat's Day" in Japan , though we didn't know, some people thought it was a Cat's Day Event! ;-P





A Newspaper writer came and meet us, hearing how spay/neuter is necessary for pets, for thier health and welfare.





This is me that in a cat suits!
I have been looking forward to this day because I could wear the cat costume.
I was veeerrry happy to wear it.



These are our members.Now we are very small but next year, we want to gather more volunteers and make this event bigger, so that spay/neuter would be spread in our district.

Last week, I had a very exciting and wonderful experiense...It was TV filming!
I'm helping a TNR volunteer group(it's name is Japan Cat Network, managed by a couple of American) and a British TV company came to their shelter and filmed some cats!

Their main purpose was to reserch about MANEKINEKO(in English, happy cat?) and to film some Japanese Bobtail cats.
First,they thought to film GOTOKU-Ji temple in Tokyo, where the birthplace of MANEKINEKO legend.But the legend of MANEKINEKO in GOTOKI-JI temple is related to our city,Hikone.The lord of Hikone, whose name was Naotaka Ii, was waved by a cat and followed him, then thunder falled down where Ii had stood a few minutes ago. Ii was saved by the cat and it's supposed to be the beginning of MANEKINEKO.

It's also a model of the Hikone city's maskot,"Hikonyan".(see there)


It was my first experiense of seeing TV job, I thought TV filming was a very hard job.But all staffs were very nice people who loved animals very much, especially Joannna Lamley!
To be honest, I didn't know her though she is a big actress in England...but she was very openhearted and friendly, never looked like a posturer.She had a dinner with all of us at a very casual restaurant of OKONOMIYAKI, I never imagined that such a big actress would eat simple food like OKONOMIYAKI!

I don't know when it will be on air, but I hope it would be a nice program!

I found this interesting news today...
If I trained my cats, would he be able to use comb to make clean his hair?
Now only he can do is watching us cleaning our room!

The news is here : Clever Critters: 8 Best Non-Human Tool Users