Whenever I see people kicking and disrespecting stray dogs, I feel really bad for them. These stray dogs are not only treated poorly by people but are also malnourished. I am a dog lover since childhood and I have always wanted one but did not get it. To cater to this issue I did service as a CAS experience by giving food such as leftover rotis and biscuits to stray dogs around my society. I fed them every weekend for a month. Not only did they get food but also love from me. Whenever I went to feed these dogs, they were very eager to meet me and it could be seen in their eyes. Even though I could not get my own dog, interacting with these stray dogs was a fun experience for me.
LO 2: One challenge that I faced was that some dogs were scared by me while some dogs were barking at me when I first tried to give them food. This is probably due to the fact how poorly they are treated by people. During my first visit, due to the barking, I just gave them food from a distance. When I went away, I watched them eat it. During my second visit, the barking stopped and the hesitation to eat the food was significantly lower. After that, the dogs started to trust me, so much so that one dog even jumped on me when it saw the food in my hand. This was a little scary for me, but I dealt with it. Another challenge that I faced was that two of the stray dogs were very dominating and they did not let the other stray dogs eat the food and ate all of it by themselves. To deal with this challenge, I had to give food to other stray dogs separately when these two stray dogs were not around.
All in all, this experience was really fun for me and I was also able to create some bonds with the stray dogs. I showcased the learner profile attribute of ‘Caring’ as I cared for the stray dogs. I think that overall, this experience was a success and after seeing how happy the dogs were after receiving the food, I will still continue to give them food when there are leftovers at my home. I will also give them biscuits as from the experience, it seemed that they liked it a lot.
