Today is World Animal Day 2017

As the world marks World Animal Day 2017 today, ASKiNG RADiO Senior Reporter, KiNG JAMES YiYE looks at the significant of this day and also pays tribute to his animals.
The World Animal Day is aimed at raising the status of animals in order to improve welfare standards around the globe. Building the celebration of World Animal Day unites the animal welfare movement, mobilising it into a global force to make the world a better place for all animals.  It's celebrated in different ways in every country, irrespective of nationality, religion, faith or political ideology.  Through increased awareness and education we can create a world where animals are always recognised as sentient beings and full regard is always paid to their welfare.

Dog
My Mum who died in 2003 told me I was a ‘pet lover’ at just 3 months old. She would tie a puppy around my play area and continue with her domestic chores while I pulled its ears and giggle as it would yelp.
Later in life, I discovered that dogs don’t necessarily hurt little babies even when the babies hurt them.
I grew up with dogs, my father would buy high breed dogs like Caucasian, Alsatian, Doberman and some breed I now think should have been Italian Mastiff.
I’ve owned my first dog since 2009. Nom’Or my Russian Shepherd Dog so named for his aggressive and overbearing personality is still alive and extremely strong and very aggressive. Nom’Or can tame a lion, he knows members of my immediate family but rages at outsiders even those he has seen around us for over 5 years. He doesn’t take anything for granted. Nom’Or is a complete Guard Dog and he knows his job.
His first wife Kpam’kwase died in 2013 due to negligence from my younger brothers. They had left had tied to a pole in the sun on a very short leash, whatever happened, she was left there for over 5 hours and she got strangled!
I had a replacement known as Kpam’kwase 2, a Female Veterinarian Doctor treated her and she died few days after, I was so traumatized I called for autopsy but she kept me waiting all day before finally telling the other doctors were too busy to join her to my place but said I should just bury the dog.
Nom’Or at the moment has two wives; a Russian Shepherd and an Italian Mastiff. They live in a two room apartment and are looKiNG forward to maKiNG life better.
My Italian Mastiff is a hell of beast! She eats stones, plastic and sticks. She is mean and howls all day. She cracks the hardest bone

Parrot
We first had Jay Zeed and Beyondcé as our first Parrots, they were the green short tailed.
Real love was displayed when the male escaped, he would mobilize other Parrots who probably migrated from Senegal to come for a rescue mission, he kept on coming daily in company of others for over 3 months until we were able to capture him back into the cage, but later released them to the wild.
Ghana and Ashanti were our African Gray Parrots, those with the ability to mimic human voice. Ghana had started talKiNG but Ashanti was very shy, they had stayed with us in London custom built cage we ordered for them.
The Parrots enjoyed Sunflower eating seeds which we also imported from London courtesy of The House.
Just one day, one of our domestic staff deliberately left the cage open, and left the house, when I returned after two hours, Ghana was in the cage but Ashanti wasn’t, I looked around everywhere with no clue for a whole day until I checked the CCTV Cameras and noticed a shocKiNG finding, Nom’Or for the first time killed and consumed a bird...
Few weeks later, the cage’s big door was open again and Ghana wasn’t inside, this time, I checked the CCTV Cameras and saw one of the staff going through the gate with a bag, something he denied until I sacked all of them.
We presently have two long tail Senegalese Parrots but we miss Ghana and Ashanti.

Chicken
Jiorge is the head of our chicken family. He is such a greedy rooster. He uses his size and position to intimidate the others and he picks nearly every grain dropped for him and his family.
Jiorge raped some under aged chicks to death when Jiorgina was incubating the second set of eggs which would welcome their second batch of chicks. He couldn’t just wait, I then realized every mail animal needed backup port for spam storage...

Fish
We have had catfish for over 3 years and over a year ago, we have tilapia. The fun about tilapia is that, they can hatch in a pond, ours are doing great.
Our experience keeping animals is that, humans can learn a lot from them.
This is wishing our animals a fun filled World Animal Day.