Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Ten years ago she formed An­i­mals Are Hu­man Too (AAHT T&T), a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion made up of an­i­mal rights ac­tivists.What is the group's mis­sion? To pro­tect and save the lives of in­no­cent an­i­mals.For Nali­ni Di­al, her love for an­i­mals is like sec­ond na­ture. A pas­sion she found in the ear­ly years of her child­hood and has nev­er turned away from it.

"As a child I al­ways had a love for an­i­mals. I al­ways had dogs and rab­bits, and I would al­ways be res­cu­ing an­i­mals, whether it was a stray dog, or some­one else's pet who was not be­ing cared for prop­er­ly.

"I would take it and make sure it was re­cov­ered and then try to get it adopt­ed, or I would end up keep­ing it my­self," Di­al ex­plained.

Most times Di­al would end up hous­ing 15 to 20 dogs, which got her par­ents re­al­ly up­set. Bump­ing a few heads with them was nec­es­sary, how­ev­er, as in her own words–she was just try­ing to save an an­i­mal.

With a per­son­al­i­ty that close­ly re­sem­bles that of en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Erin Brokovich, Di­al said, "Long ago, to care for an­i­mals was seen as an ad­mirable qual­i­ty by oth­ers. But in to­day's world, where peo­ple are so self­ish, they look at an­i­mal rights ac­tivists as though we not too right in our heads. They even call us names, but it has not hin­dered us," she swore.

'We can­not let them die'

The as­so­ci­a­tion gained pub­lic recog­ni­tion in Sep­tem­ber, when Di­al and mem­bers of the group protest­ed and chal­lenged of­fi­cials at the San Fer­nan­do dog pound, sav­ing 34 out of 50 dogs that were sup­posed to be eu­thanised by lethal in­jec­tion. The res­cued dogs re­ceived vet­eri­nar­i­an care, and have since been adopt­ed by in­di­vid­u­als.

"Can you imag­ine if these dogs weren't res­cued, they would be dead to­day? And look they found homes, peo­ple want them," quipped Di­al.

Ac­cord­ing to Di­al, once the an­i­mals were caught, they would usu­al­ly be put to death af­ter sev­en days if no one claimed them.

"We find in the year 2010, to take such a bar­bar­ic ap­proach to con­trol the over pop­u­la­tion of strays and the over­crowd­ing at shel­ters and pounds across the coun­try is just ab­surd, and it has to be stopped. There are oth­er so­lu­tions to the prob­lem," she said.

Di­al and her team al­so make sure that the dogs' new own­ers are ed­u­cat­ed on prop­er an­i­mal care, and that they (the own­ers) were do­ing all they could to pre­vent them from stray­ing.

The word is out

Since Di­al's brave in­ter­ven­tion at the San Fer­nan­do dog pound, she said the as­so­ci­a­tion was now over­whelmed with phone calls, e-mails, and text mes­sages from cit­i­zens who were not on­ly pet own­ers, but peo­ple who were call­ing to get in­for­ma­tion on find­ing homes for strays or un­want­ed an­i­mals. But most im­por­tant­ly, peo­ple were call­ing to re­port cas­es of an­i­mal cru­el­ty and abuse.

Chal­lenges

AATH is made up of 30 mem­bers, but ac­cord­ing to Di­al, on­ly three of them, her­self in­clud­ed, fi­nanced the work of the group. This, she said, made achiev­ing some of their goals a bit chal­leng­ing, as the task of ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic, car­ing for aban­doned, ill-treat­ed and sick an­i­mals, and to lo­cat­ing homes for them was very cost­ly. "We have just got­ten to a point where we can on­ly do so much," lament­ed Di­al.

To the pow­ers-that-be

In a bid to spread her mes­sage through­out so­ci­ety, Di­al has be­gun knock­ing on the door of Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans. "We have been keep­ing up the pres­sure. I have writ­ten to the PM about the sit­u­a­tion, and of­fered so­lu­tions to the prob­lem," stat­ed Di­al. She has al­so writ­ten to Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter, Vas­ant Bharath, for the des­ig­na­tion of a par­cel of land to be used as an all-in­clu­sive na­tion­al an­i­mal sanc­tu­ary.

A third let­ter was sent to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter, Tim Gopeesingh, to in­clude an an­i­mal rights pro­gramme on the ed­u­ca­tion syl­labus.

Di­al is al­so plan­ning to write a fourth and fi­nal let­ter to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Dwayne Gibbs, in the hope that he would un­der­stand the group's vi­sion and would act on its plight, as she said he came from a coun­try where this is­sue was tak­en very se­ri­ous­ly.

Mes­sage to the pub­lic

"An­i­mals in­hab­it this plan­et just like us. They have an im­por­tant role to play, they have feel­ings and emo­tions, they do not have a voice, so we hu­man be­ings are their voice. We have a du­ty to pro­tect them. "All an­i­mals should be treat­ed with re­spect, dig­ni­ty and com­pas­sion," Di­al de­clared with con­vic­tion.