Last Thursday, Shantee and Peter joined several other animals for a pet event Rated K is holding for their Valentines’ Day TV special. It’s going to be aired this coming Sunday, February 10, at 6:30PM on ABS-CBN. I’d love to say more about it, but it’s better you just watch it first. It’s really cute, promise

Shantee and Peter met a LOT new “friends,” though I don’t think Shantee liked the alligator at all. Hehe. We have more behind-the-scenes photos with Shantee’s new animal friends, but posting them before the feature could ruin the surprise So for now, we’ll just show you a few snapshots of Shantee’s first ever (and probably the last) trip to Manila Zoo.

Normally, pets aren’t allowed within Manila Zoo. And with good reason—doing so could turn nasty for your pet and the zoo animal. You don’t know how the animals would react to each other, and that’s a risk that the zoo doesn’t want to take. Bringing Shantee and the other pet animals was a special case—Rated K had to get a permission from the zoo and reserve an entire area for their event.

To be honest, Marc and I only let Shantee mingle with the pets brought in for the event. We only took pictures with the zoo animals we passed by on the way to the reserved venue.

Ok, I’ll have to admit that we were worried Shantee would pick up illness from the other animals—they weren’t really well taken-care of. The state of the animals in Manila Zoo is a far cry from those healthy animals in Zoobic. And yes, this may sound really snobby, but Marc and I also didn’t want Shantee get her paws dirty. There weren’t any trash on the ground, but the walkways were quite dusty. I would be the one carrying Shantee during the blessing, and I didn’t want getting dirt on me.

As an animal-lover, mingling with animals is always a treat. But I was torn between pity and fascination when I looked at some of the animals at Manila Zoo—I wanted to take home some of the monkeys and bring them to the vet or something. It’s the same pity that strengthened my resolve to work even harder so I’d become rich enough to have the resources to rescue and rehabilitate sickly and abused animals. That’s actually one of the reasons why we have so many dogs here at home—some of our dogs just showed up at our doorstep one day seeking shelter and food.

My experience last Thursday was the perfect example of “bittersweet”—a mixture of happiness and sadness. It was a sad thing seeing the zoo animals needing more care than they seem to be receiving, but meeting fellow animal-lovers and their pets was an incredible experience—you can just see the love emanating between the handlers and their pets. And that, is a rare moment that I’d love to see again and again

Many thanks to the Rated K crew for giving our pets a moment in the spotlight and bringing together this wonderful group of people!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Dogs on TV, My Dogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.