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PEOPLE • PEOPLE INSPIRE PEOPLE<br />
71<br />
JACE CHONG – ANIMALS MATTER<br />
The day was sunny and the<br />
weather considerably warmer<br />
than the weeks before. Jace<br />
parked her car outside her house<br />
and made her way quickly to her<br />
furry friends. She gently picked<br />
up Lucky, a young mongrel that<br />
she rescued and played with it for<br />
a little while.<br />
Lucky was happy to see Jace as it<br />
dragged itself towards her. Jace<br />
carefully cleaned Lucky’s lower<br />
body, applied medication to its<br />
wounds and gave it a big hug.<br />
“It is fine, Lucky. All is good,”<br />
she whispered.<br />
Lucky is among the 30 dogs and<br />
cats and 48 birds that call the<br />
Kechara Forest Retreat home.<br />
All these beautiful animals have<br />
formed part of Jace’s expanding<br />
family.<br />
“When we found Lucky after its<br />
accident, it was paralysed from<br />
the waist down. It could not<br />
walk at all and would sleep in its<br />
own urine and faeces. It broke<br />
my heart because I didn’t know<br />
how to take care of Lucky. When<br />
I was at work, it would just lie in<br />
a puddle of mess. But I wasn’t<br />
ready to give up.”<br />
Jace was determined to improve<br />
Lucky’s quality of life and did<br />
not agree to put the injured dog<br />
to sleep as suggested by many<br />
because it would require too much<br />
manpower, time, effort and money<br />
to nurse Lucky as this canine would<br />
be immobile forever.<br />
“I hope to be able to give Lucky<br />
a second chance,” Jace said. She<br />
is very much against the idea of<br />
euthanasia as a convenient way<br />
to solve the problems of pets<br />
that are deemed incurable and in<br />
pain. “My aim is to find solutions<br />
for these animals to continue<br />
living and to give them care and<br />
love. That’s what they need,” she<br />
said. And she went on ahead to<br />
seek help for Lucky.<br />
Jace joined Kechara as a full-time<br />
employee to be part of the video<br />
production team. With her years<br />
of experience in the TV industry,<br />
she is more than qualified to<br />
produce the in-house filming of<br />
Kechara’s events and teachings<br />
of H.E. the 25th Tsem Rinpoche.<br />
But little did she know that in<br />
2012, she would start rescuing<br />
animals, which would change her<br />
life indefinitely.<br />
It is a well-known fact that Tsem<br />
Rinpoche is an animal lover, a trait<br />
that he has shown since he was a<br />
child living in the US. But when<br />
Jace was exposed to the sphere<br />
of assisting a life that possibly<br />
couldn’t do anything for her in<br />
return, she began to understand<br />
that it is in giving that living is the<br />
most meaningful.
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