My heroes, these beautiful humans who rescue, save, and love the wounded and the broken animals. Shumaila Sajid and her two daughters Mishal 23, and Muskaan, 18, and their Rawalpindi-based animal rescue organization, Let’s Save, founded in 2014. A homemaker and a single mother, Shumaila is a role model for her children. Daughters, who are a testament to the beauty of being raised with light, love, and kindness. Theirs is a world of caring and healing, the three of them and the countless animals that they have saved, cared for, loved, and put up for adoption.
Despite seeing endless agony of abused and injured animals, Shumaila, Mishal and Muskaan, both studying business management, continue their noble work without losing faith in the power of empathy and compassion to make ours a better, a kinder world.
For years, the wonderful trio have worked to be a manifestation of that special empathy that goes beyond the stereotypical signs of observation and understanding. They respond to the wails of the be-zaban, the silent agony of the abused, the ones who don’t have the human ability to word their pain, who after suffering human cruelty hide in corners, melting into shadows, hoping to remain invisible. Shumaila, Mishal and Muskaan see them, and they reach out, even as their hearts break at the violence people unleash on animals. Their concern and compassion unbroken, they remain determined that they would help every animal that they see in pain or is brought to their attention.
Available 24/7, 365 days a year, to provide help to animals in need, this fabulous little family can be contacted on phone and on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Let’s Save works with another wonderful human being, a veterinarian, who provides treatment and boarding services on discounted rates for their rescued animals.
Using their personal funds and donations, Let’s Save provides multiple services: pick-and-drop of rescues, safe transportation to the vet, treatment, boarding, spay and neuter, vaccination, and adoption. Let’s Save also holds food drives for animals and provide food to stray animals.
For Gulf News, I asked Shumaila Sajid a few questions:
What inspired you to start working to help and save wounded and abused stray animals?
Shumaila Sajid: A few years ago, my daughter Mishal picked up a puppy from a road; he was badly injured after a biker ran over him. We helped him not as Let's Save but just as individuals with hearts that could not ignore his pain. That puppy, paralysed in the accident, recovered, and now lives his best life at a huge farmhouse with other animals to play with. When I saw that transformation, I was truly touched. That incident changed my life, and since then we have rescued hundreds of animals, alhamdulillah.
In your voluntary work to rescue animals, what are some of the worst things that humans do to animals that live on streets?
Sadly, we see cases of terrible abuse every day. People beat dogs with bricks, pelt them with stones, shoot them. And there have even been times we saw animals who were hanged to death in front of each other. When these poor animals being attacked try to defend themselves with even the smallest bark or a bite, they are labelled as monsters. It’s extremely unfair and senseless. If only people were nice to them, dogs are born to serve humans, not hurt them. It’s in their nature to protect and love. But heartless and dangerous people abuse them, and then they spread stories about dogs being the dangerous ones.
A few days you posted a terribly painful story of a mother dog poisoned in the presence of her puppies. What happened to that dog?
Recently, we saw yet another case of terrible abuse where a mother who was feeding her puppies was poisoned. She was taken to our clinic but didn't survive. She was screaming in pain for hours on the road and died a slow painful death. This mother dog was not aggressive. She did not say anything to anybody. She was just trying to survive and feed her babies in a corner, quietly. Why was she tortured like that? There's no justification for what happens to these poor souls.
Do you have any suggestion for the provincial and central governments to ensure the end to animal cruelty?
Government needs to provide better awareness and education regarding animal abuse and taking care of nature and God's creations. All these things are made to serve positive purposes; without the animal world, environment would be doomed. Humans, unlike animals, only cause destruction. It's not difficult at all for any government to have an ad on TV or put posters up regarding kindness to animals. Laws have been enacted to ban animal abuse, but so far there has been no official announcement or implementation.
It's extremely easy for government to try to change people’s thinking with a simple campaign promoting animal rights. If people don't help animals, that’s fine, but they can at least be taught to not abuse them. What the government seriously needs to teach the people is that animals, especially dogs, have equal rights to share the earth. These animals were here long before us humans.
