The Wizard of Oz: Dorothy the Hero

The Wizard of Oz is a very popular children novel. It is not only popular with children though, but also adult. It has been adapted into movies, plays, and musicals. I think that it’s popular because not only it’s filled with adventures, interesting lands and characters, but it also provides hope and encouragement. It gives us hope that ordinary people like us could overcome challenges and be a hero.

Dorothy is an ordinary girl, who had to face extreme challenges to go home after she was whisked away to the land of Oz. We probably wouldn’t consider her to have hero-materials. However, she brought great changes in the Land of Oz and to the people who live there. She liberated the citizen of Oz from evil witches and helped expose the fake ruler of the Emerald City. During her personal journey to go home to Kansas, she made friends with the Scarecrow, Tinman, and Cowardly Lion and while accompanying her, they learned and gained confidence. At the end of their journey, all three of them became rulers who were able to govern and help their subjects wisely. Those are all the qualities of heroes. They brought changes and better lives for others. They encourage and inspire others for the better. They take actions and are determined to go through with their quests. These all bring hope to others and hope often brings changes. The famous heroes in history and today's world, such as Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Malala Yousafzai; all have these traits.

I'm sure the heroes of the past, present, and future too have sometimes lost hope in their journey. We know this from the diaries or journals that some left behind. Mother Teresa may be one of the symbols of Christianity, but there were times when she had no faith for God. Based on her letters, she wrote that there were times when she felt empty and found nothing inspiring when helping the sick poor. She asked for support so that she could still continue on her work as she felt that she was left alone by God.

Another example of someone whose hopes were often dashed is Malala Yousafzai. She campaigned hard for girls' rights to have an education, which was unsupported, and eventually banned by the Taliban. There were several times when she had to face danger of being attacked by the Taliban when she secretly went to school in Pakistan. She's also in great danger when she spoke out about it, which resulted in her getting shot by the Taliban. However, she persisted and refused to stop fighting for what she believe is right. Now, she has an organization dedicated to help and improve girls' life and education. Dorothy had to face a lot of challenges that seemed too difficult for her to overcome. Although generally, she didn’t lose hope and persist on, there were times where she was discouraged. She got upset when the raft brought her away from the golden road to Oz and was upset when Oz's balloon left without her. However, she quickly gained hope when the guard of the Emerald Palace told her that Glinda the Witch of the South might be able to help her.

From this story, it showed that anyone can be a hero, no matter your background. Dorothy brought significant changes to the people of Oz. Even though she's just an ordinary little girl from the boring plains of Kansas, she indirectly brought people hope, and hope often results in change. In a way, she's kind of a hero to the Land of Oz, and Dorothy left Oz as an honoured person.
All these heroes, both real and fictional, had the choice of giving up or persist through their hardships. However, they chose the latter and were awarded with their achievements. As the saying goes, you have to suffer before you succeed.

Should We Defend a Bullied Victim Against Our Own Friends?

When I was in primary school, there was this boy in my class named Jaden (not his real name). Unlike the other boys in my class, he often hanged around and played with the girls. From what I observed, Jaden didn't have any gender identity issues or anything like that. It's just that he didn't act like the norm of boys that age. This caused the whole class to call him a "girly boy", me included.
I know that this was just meant as a joke and Jaden often laughed it off. From my point of view, Jaden didn’t seem to mind, and we still had a good relationship whether I tease him or not. In retrospect, I never really knew how he felt. Did our teasing ever made him uncomfortable or questioned himself? Did it made him feel frustrated and bullied? Did it affect his characters and actions in the future?

Some bullied victims became a danger to the society and themselves. In the US, there had been many cases of school shooting that shocked the world. In Asia, such as Japan and Taiwan, there had also been cases of public stabbing. After investigations, a lot of these criminals, appeared to be children who had been bullied before. They generally become loners and have a lot of bottled up anger against the public inside.

So the root of a lot of these problems is bullying. Some bullying were made without us realizing it, such as what I did to Jaden. I didn’t mean to cause him any harm and I thought it was all just good fun. But now, thinking about it, we were quite insensitive to what he was feeling.

Children are often ignorant about all this. Growing up, children tend to seek stability and security. They feel safe being in familiar surrounding with familiar people. So it’s natural for children to be apprehensive or reject differences. Thus, respect and toleration should be hammered into children's minds starting from a very young age. They should also be taught to always think of the consequences of their actions, especially bullying.

These must be implemented both at home and school. Unfortunately, some parents either don't care or deny that their children are bullies. Then there are those who don't know what they should do with their children's behaviours. Both parents and teachers must be taught how to deal with bullying and why they should do that. Children should also be taught how to have the guts to stand up for themselves and others.

I wasn’t brave enough to go against my friends and acted that way due to peer pressure. If I stood up for him, my friends would talk behind my back about this and make fun of me. I try my best not to change my relationship with my friends, as I like to be part of the big group. After all, they're also my friends, and I wouldn't like to go against what most of them think. I hope that our ignorance and harmless teasing didn’t affect Jaden negatively. I am grateful to know that now societies are more aware of this problem. Both children and teacher organisations are now trying their best to tackle this problem. Hopefully this will lead to less problems in the future.

The Wizard Of Oz: Is Hiding a Lie, a Crime?

After finally defeating the Wicked Witch of the West, the four travellers went back to Oz to claim his promises. They got lost on the way back to Emerald City, but with the help of the Winged Monkeys, they finally reached the Emerald City. No one expected the four to come back so soon -- and alive! Not even Oz. However, instead of being immediately summoned to meet the Wizard of Oz and received their rewards, Dorothy and her friends were left to wait for days. They finally got an audience with Oz after they threatened him with the winged monkeys. During this session, quite by accident, they discovered that the Wizard of Oz was just a humbug. He was not an all-powerful Wizard but an old man from Dorothy’s land.

Dorothy and her friends felt deceived! They had put their life on the line by facing the Wicked Witch of the West, and it was all for nothing! They would never get what they wanted, because the Wizard of Oz wasn't a wizard at all. If I were in their position, I would have exposed him to his citizens. However, Dorothy and her friends had very simple mind and goals. They were only concerned about their own wishes. It had not occurred to them at all to expose him at all. Once their wishes were fulfilled, they were happy and forgave the Wizard for his lies. They also still treated him like a great powerful wizard up till the moment he left the Emerald City for his hometown.

I think that a large percentage of the inhabitants of our world is actually just like Dorothy and her friends. The normal citizens are usually more simple and are just concern with individual or family’s needs. As long as those needs are fulfilled, generally, they won’t go find troubles. They won’t go exposing other authorities or politicians’ misdeeds and crimes just for the sake of justice.

The Wizard of Oz: Dorothy's Hidden Strengths

In exchange to have their wishes granted, Dorothy and her friends were given the task to kill the Wicked Witch of the West by the Wizard of Oz. The friends were all horrified and crestfallen at first. However, as there were no other alternatives, they decided to give it a try. Surprisingly, with no plans, no armies, and no advantages; they succeeded.

In real life, we sometimes felt as if we’ve reached the end of the line with no way to solve our problems. However, as long as we don’t give up and lose hope, we might discover more strengths in ourselves that we didn’t realize were there before. Dorothy didn’t know that she bore the mark of goodness, which protected her from any harm from evil. She’s also not afraid of water or darkness, which the Witch feared. She wore magical silver shoes that belonged to the Wicked Witch of the East, which were powerful, but Dorothy didn’t know that.

As Dorothy didn’t know her strengths, she didn’t dare go against the Witch and obeyed all her orders. The Witch, seeing that Dorothy was so meek, she underestimated her. It’s true that Dorothy was an innocent child. However, she still had strengths that helped her win the battle with the Witch. She cared about her friend and smuggled food for the Lion. Thus the Witch’s plan to starve the Lion until he does what she wanted failed. The Witch saw that Dorothy didn’t know how to use her powers and strengths and therefore, the Witch dared to plot against her instead of running away. She thought that she had won when she successfully obtained one of the silver shoes. She was laughing triumphantly, when Dorothy threw a bucket of water at her and thus reverse the situation. Dorothy successfully defeated the Witch without meaning to.

We sometimes have strengths that other people and ourselves might not know or consider as a strength. But these strengths unknowingly help us solve our problems and achieve our goals. If Dorothy had not been the innocent child that she was, the story might play out differently.

The Wizard of Oz: Dorothy and Her Friend's First Impression of Oz Analysis

In her journey to the Emerald City to find the Wizard to help her go back to Kansas, Dorothy met The Scarecrow, Tinman, and Cowardly Lion. They became travel companions as each of them thought that they lacked something and wanted to ask the Wizard to give them what they lack. After facing a lot of obstacles and hardships, the company finally reached the gates of the Emerald City and gained an audience with the Wizard of Oz.

The Wizard of Oz appeared in different facades to Dorothy and her companions. These facades threw them off-guard, thus all previous preparations to deal with Oz were ineffective. The different appearances of Oz also intimidated the citizens of Emerald City and elevated him as more superior and mysterious. No one knew who he really was and what he would do next. Therefore his power over the Emerald City was unchallengeable.

This aspect of Oz showed us the effective use of image or persona in controlling the public. Public figures, such as politicians and celebrities, all use certain persona to influence the public to achieve their goals, whether it’s to sell music albums, products, or compete for presidential seats. Some of them even have marketing advisors to help package and sell their image to the public, with hopes that the target audience trust or like them enough to be willing to help them achieve their goals. Oz’s goal was to keep the citizens submissive and afraid of him. He wanted to appear larger and more powerful than the public. However, he also didn’t want to appear evil like the Wicked Witch of the East and West. Thus he never allowed people to see him and rumours went around about his appearance. When Dorothy and friends appeared before him, he appeared to be both scary and good or beautiful at the same time.

A person’s image can greatly help him to achieve his goal. In this era of advanced technology and communication, social media such as Facebook and Instagram become a platform to build up this image. Being able to effectively establish the persona that you want can really help you to achieve your goals or advance in your career. The chosen image might not be real, but if convincing enough, you can persuade the public to believe you. The Wizard of Oz didn’t really have magic powers, but he was able to fool the citizens of Oz by projecting a very powerful and authoritative image.

The Rise of Pet Business

More people are owning pets now compared to the past. Due to various reasons, a growing trend of millennials shun having children and prefer to keep pets for companions. Additionally, pets are starting to be seen more as family members than just as animals. Some people would even go to the point of pampering them. This has opened up a lot of opportunities for pet related businesses.

As pet owners chase their pursue their careers and ambitions, they aren’t able to accompany or fully care for their pets. They rely on pet walkers, sitters, and daycares to attend to their pets. During the weekends, they want to spend quality times with their pets and thus public places that allow for pets have become very popular. One of the pet communities hangout spots is Central Park Mall, which has a large garden for pets to roam in. With large crowds as these, opportunists see dollar signs. Pop up pet stores “pop up” to offer a wide selection of pet products and services.

As the millennials nowadays are more concern with health: selecting organic foods, non-paraben shampoo and fitnesses. The same attitudes are applied to their pets. So nowadays there are wider selection of pet food, pet clothing, and even pet-gym. Pet owners want the best they can afford for their pets. All those pet products and services don’t come cheap. However, pet owners are more than willing to cough up the dough. In this era of social media, pets owners love to share about the new toys their pets have or the pampering they receive in the spa. This propel “followers” to also “follow” this trend. Thus, create a booming pet industry.

Internship In K9 Canine Kennels

On June 2018, I had an internship at a local dog kennel. This internship was inspired by my mom’s friend, who is a science teacher in German International School. She wrote a post about how important an internship is in our learning process, as it gives us experience in the field that we are interested in. So.... I decided to do one. I wanted to do something related to animals, because I love animals. First, I made 2 CVs. One was for an NGO (Non-Government Organization) involved with animal welfare and the other one for K9 Canine kennels, run by drh.Titi and Om Tatung, a veterinarian and dog trainer. It provides boarding & training for dogs. I was accepted in the latter.

K9 Canine Kennels is located in Ciputat. It’s pretty far from my house. They’re open from 9:00 – 18:00, but drh.Titi and Om Tatung will come sometime around 12 p.m. All dogs are welcome in the kennel, there are even dogs from shelters staying there! When drh.Titi received my CV, I was immediately accepted. It might be because I was a long time client of hers. I was allowed to work there as long as I wanted, and was even allowed to turn up any time! I started around the end of May, near the Eid-Al Fitr holidays. During long holidays like these, the kennel is usually at full capacity as people usually can’t bring their dogs along with them. My internship lasted a total of 16 days, but I didn’t go to the kennel every day. I initially planned to do my internship for 14 days, but then I extended it, for reasons you will read later on. I didn’t receive any salary for my internship.

I felt pretty excited to do my internship and I expected myself to be really busy on my first few days. Somehow, I really like being busy. However, contrary to my expectations, I wasn’t busy on my first few days. All I did was watch the kennel boys and carried out simple tasks under supervision. My day usually started at 9:00 to 4:30. My everyday chores included feeding and bathing dogs; and taking away the dogs’ dirty bowls. When I had free time, I usually talked with Om Tatung, the head dog trainer there.

My first chore when I arrived at the kennel in the morning was to clear away the dogs’ food bowls that hadn’t been taken away. Usually the food bowls would be taken away by the kennel boys after the dogs finished their meals, but some dogs take much longer to finish their foods. A lot of factors may affect the dogs’ unwillingness to eat, such as sicknesses. The kennel boys would leave the bowls until sometime later, hoping that the dogs would finish their meals. While I was clearing their food bowls, I would also refill their water.

This task wasn’t as fast or as easy as it appeared to be. There were times when the dog escaped from its cage when I tried to take the food bowls. It depended on the position of the bowl in the cage. Some bowls were close enough for me to reach without entering the cage. Some were placed a bit farther in the cage. In these cases, I had to actually enter the cage to be able to reach the bowl. Sometimes the dog would slip out when I open the cage’s door to enter. Luckily, the cages were all in an enclosed area, so no dogs escaped out of the kennel.

My next chore was to bath the dogs. I learned to bath dogs with and without skin problems. During my first few days there, I was supervised by the kennel boys when bathing the latter, because I still couldn’t bath and dry a dog well. Bathing a dog wrongly could result in skin problems. For the dogs with skin problems, I was always supervised by the vet, as there were a variety of problems which require different medications.

During bath time, most dogs are usually calm. First I brought the dogs out from their cage on a leash, then I chained them onto the bathing area. This would prevent them from escaping. After that I would pour a mixture of soap and water over their body then scrub it. Some dogs didn’t like certain parts of their body touched, but as they were chained, they couldn’t really defend themselves. I just had to watch out for the nips and warning bites the dogs made whenever they had the chance. I had to bath the smaller dogs quickly because they usually get cold easily.

Bathing a labrador puppy

The most difficult part was drying them up. We use a blower in the kennel. Blowers emit a really powerful wind from the tubes. We have to put the tube really close to the dogs’ bodies to make sure the skin and hidden furs are dry too. Small dogs are often feisty no matter which part of body the blower tube blow. For bigger dogs, they usually are feisty when their heads are being blown.

Drying up huskies with a blower.

I also learned some tips and tricks during my internship. I had difficulties in cutting dogs’ nails, as they often wouldn’t keep still. The dogs’ would freak out whenever the nail clipper touches their paws. A trick I learned was to cut their paws while bathing them, so the dog was distracted with all the water, soap and scrubbing. I also learned not to comb a dog for too long because all the pulling of the fur could hurt the dog. I was in charge of grooming a dog that was to be picked up on a certain day and I wanted the dog to look “perfect”, with straight fur like those dogs in show competitions. I guess I groomed it for too long and was reminded by the kennel boy that combing too much could hurt the dog. Luckily, it wasn’t hurt.

Not the dog that I combed for too long.

In the evening, I prepared the dogs’ meals. I only prepared the evening meals because their morning meals were prepared really early in the morning, before I came. There were a variety of dog food, cooked and raw meat, veggies, fruits, milk, and broth. Some dog owners also brought their own pet’s meals. I was responsible for some cages, and I had to memorize the foods that the dogs’ in those cages eat. It could get pretty hard when the dogs that occupy the cages kept on changing.

Feeding the dogs

Every morning and evening the cages were cleaned by the kennel boys. Somehow, I wasn’t offered to clean the cages, so I decided to ask them to teach me. I had to scrub away all the muck and wash them out. It was pretty tiring and smelly, but at least I made their temporary living space clean.
If a dog just moved out and its cage wasn’t needed urgently, the cage was sprayed with flea repellents. I was taught to pump the flea repellent formula into the sprayer. I had to spray carefully around the cage and avoid the other cages. The flea repellent is poisonous when licked by the dogs, and can cause death.

I got my first bite from a dog when I was doing this internship. The most painful was when I caught a runway black dog. It was my mistake; I tried to pick him up from the back without any warning. Surprised, the dog turned around and bit my hand in self defence. But from that, I learned that I must let him sniff my hand so that he knows me, then put a leash around his neck slowly, without any shocking movements.

The proper way to meet a dog. Put out your hand for it to sniff, then slowly touch its body or put a leash around its neck.

I was also taught to prepare vaccines for the dogs. During my first times preparing them, I couldn’t get the vaccines out from the bottles into the syringe. They kept on getting stuck, and I was always helped by vet Titi. Towards the end of my internship though, I was able to prepare a lot of vaccines, and even vaccinated police dogs!

Preparing vaccines under the supervision of drh.Titi.

Preparing vaccines for the police dogs 

I also talked about some of the jobs police dogs have. I’m quite interested in police dogs, because they seem cool. Om Tatung explained that the most common police dog jobs in Indonesia are as detection dogs. They are usually trained to do human tracking and sniff out bombs and narcotics. Now, some dogs were trained to detect illegal food and things brought into an airport, not limited to just bombs and narcotics. There are also detection dogs that were trained for detecting certain sicknesses, such as cancer and diabetes, but those types of dogs are still not trained here in Indonesia.

My favourite chore out of all of them was bathing dogs. It’s because I would often get wet after bathing them (especially the big dogs) and it’s like I’m playing with water. I also enjoyed watching the water drops sprayed out of the dogs’ body by the blower.

In the kennel, I fell in love with a Rottweiler called Joey. He’s from a shelter and is staying in the kennel. It was because of him that I extended my internship until 16 days. I visited him every Saturday. He came into the shelter because he disappointed his owner. His previous owner bought him to guard the house, but as Joey was a happy go lucky clown and really friendly, a thief came into his owner’s house and stole a laptop. Disappointed in Joey’s inability to scare the thief away, the owner threatened the shelter to take him or else he would be abandoned into the road. Joey’s previous owner had a reputation of abandoning dogs and buying new ones right after abandoning the other dogs, with many different minor reasons of abandoning his dogs. When I was in my internship, I played with Joey. He was a big strong dog though and I couldn’t control him. I talked with Om Tatung about how I should control dogs properly. He taught me that I should establish myself as Joey’s leader, and not obey whatever Joey wanted. Instead, Joey should be the one to obey me.

It was usually the kennel boys’ jobs to bath Joey, but as I came every Saturday on my extended internship, it became my job to take care of him. I bathed him, brought him out, and trained him. He wasn’t feisty in his bath, but he was especially naughty. He liked to grab things that he could reach with his mouth and paws and chewed them like a toy. This included the blower, the shampoo bottle, etc. That’s why I always brought him a toy from the kennel’s dog toy collections for him to chew. I taught Joey some commands under Om Tatung using toys, as he had a high play drive. The problem was that once Joey gets hold of a toy, he didn’t want to give it back. He would bite anyone who wanted to take his toy out of protectiveness. The bite wasn’t strong enough to make my hands bleed, but they hurt. Thus, Om Tatung taught me many different ways to teach Joey not to be overprotective with his belongings.

Joey's bath time!

Joey and his toy

All done!

I really loved these extra times I spent with Joey but he was eventually brought back to the shelter. Therefore, I also ended my internship.This has really been a great experience for me. I learned a lot of dog husbandry and training methods from my internship. It was a really fun experience, and I hope to do it again but in a different place. I hope this experience would be helpful with my dreams to be a veterinarian.