Of Dogs and Pigs

From his hellhole the dog’s owner will move to a house worth 140 thousand pesos. Rudy’s ‘pugad baboy’ will soon be history all because of his dog, Kabang, the hero dog.
Kabang lost his upper snout when hit and smashed by a motorcycle while saving two girls on the streets of Zamboanga City. The dog’s heroic feat became talk of the town, the nation, then the world.
With a local veterinarian at the helm, funds were raised and his treatment arranged and made possible at a U S of A veterinary hospital in California. His life from askal (asong kalye) turned to celebrity and was welcomed back to Zamboanga as a hero with all the drums and fanfare.
If left in the Philippines with its owners, one of them Rudy Bunggal, who themselves were struggling with family issues, including Rudy’s love of the alcohol, and seeming lost love for his wife, would just be — well, just be treated like a poor man’s dog and would have died on the dirt outside its master’s shanty.
Not that other members of the family don’t love the dog but poverty denied them to give the other embrace of love, care and sustenance that even a dog rightly needs.
I am not trying to look down nor pass judgment on the kind of shelter that Rudy Bunggal has. Yes, it is a makeshift ‘barong-barong’ made of ‘tagpi-tagpi’ materials but it is his home and one’s home as the saying goes is his castle.
That, however, is only being philosophical about it.
The reality is that Rudy is living example of the dismal condition of how it is to be miserably poor in the Philippines. Yet, his circumstance probably is a hundred times better than those who inhabit the slums of Manila where the worst of situations breed crimes beyond description. It is the kind of condition that led Dan Brown in his latest novel “Inferno” call “the gates of Hell.”
Some quarters were quick to condemn Dan Brown’s description of that part of Manila as “gates of Hell”. His is a work of fiction and being so he is licensed to think and write in fiction. Despite that, I agree with the tag. But that’s another story.
If I could borrow Philippine Daily Inquirer cartoonist Pol Medina’s “Pugad Baboy”, it would be it, although calling such hellish conditions of Manila slums as pigsty is such an understatement.
The popular long running comic strip appearing on the entertainment pages of the Philippine Daily Inquirer does not actually refer to pigsties but rather to its mainly obese characters that in their satiric dialogues do not hold sacred any issue or personalities.
The June 3 issue of PDI Pugad Baboy characters decried the hypocrisy of Christians. It singled out an all-girls Catholic school St. Scholastica’s negative attitude towards gays when, the cartoon says, its pretty students there are in lesbian relationships and perhaps even the nuns, it adds.
The June 3 comic strip prompted school authorities to threaten PDI with a lawsuit. The newspaper quickly responded with an apology and so did Pol Medina.
Meanwhile, PDI suspended printing of Pugad Baboy sparking protests from many of its followers crying censorship. Since his apologies and owning to stepping into perceived poor taste seemed not to suffice he said goodbye to an over two decades of relationship with PDI. This situation puts freedom of expression to a whole new test. But this too is another story.
As to whether ‘Pugad Baboy’ will find another home remains to be seen. As this happens Rudy’s move from his own ‘pugad baboy’ is bound to happen courtesy of his dog, Kabang.
Realizing the reality of the living condition Kabang faces as he returns from his treatment in California and the dogly luxuries he experienced there, the government of Zamboanga City headed by its mayor Celso Lobregat donated to Rodolfo ‘Rudy’ Bunggal a house and lot on the condition that he takes good care of Kabang.
Rudy is only one of the millions of Filipinos who live in a ‘pugad baboy’ dogged by despicable living conditions and all the offspring of such conditions that breeds discontent. And if people with all the Foundations and Charities that seem to sprout like mushrooms could not help them get better homes, then maybe another dog would.