Pets: the right message is vital

Kids need to be given advice on the care of pets:
Letter from Ng Wai Leng, Today Online 12 Jun 08;

TEEN’S Cook Book:, a programme that aired on Saturday morning over MediaCorp Channel 8, revolved around a group of children and their pets.

In view of the increasing cases of pet abandonment and animal abuse, some scenes in the show would have given impressionable children the wrong mindset about owning a pet:

•Children threatening their parents if hamsters are not purchased for them.
•Making hamsters race against each other.
•Not knowing what to feed a dog, and then feeding it with chocolate from the fridge — chocolate is toxic to dogs.
•Using a rolled-up newspaper to hit a dog when it peed in a “wrong place”.
•Keeping and breeding hamsters to give away to friends.

The media is powerful, and is an effective and fast way to reach out to a large audience. A programme like this is only good if it can also at the same time educate children on the responsibilities of pet ownership.

It would have been beneficial if at the end of the programme, advice gathered from pet behaviourists, animal shelters and welfare groups had been given, so that children are able to learn about the right and proper ways to care and tend for a pet.

Parents about to buy or better still, adopt a pet for their children, will also benefit from such information.

Highlighted acts used as examples
Today Online 12 Jun 08;
Letter from Ho Soo Fung
Vice-President
Network Programming and Promotions(Chinese broadcast)
MediaCorp TV

WE THANK Ng Wai Leng for the feedback on the programme Teen’s Cook Book. We fully agree with the writer that children should be taught to be responsible pet owners, and that was what the programme set out to do.

Teen’s Cook Book is a dramatised info-ed programme, with social and cultural lessons taught either through straightforward scenarios or negative examples where the children learn from their mistakes.

The said episode’s theme was on responsible pet ownership, and it had utilised negative examples to portray irresponsible behaviour.

So while the episode’s dramatisation portrayed the points raised by the writer, the episode was concluded with the children facing the sad consequences of their irresponsible behaviour, and drives home the lessons that children must make responsible decisions when it comes to pet ownership.