Pets, Being Able to be Unable aims to unpack the challenges faced by caregivers of special needs pets, and foster understanding and awareness of these challenges by employing empathy through the design thinking process. The ultimate goal of her project is to offer pets with disabilities a second chance at life, enabling them to thrive despite their limitations. Organising the first event dedicated for special needs pets in Singapore, she hopes that it will mitigate the necessity for euthanasia or the abandonment of these pets.

How did you get to know the challenges of caring for pets with special needs? Are you a caregiver to a special needs pet yourself?

Yes, I am. His name is Tuna. It's a cat, and he suffered from high rise syndrome. Basically, he fell down from my house and has been paralyzed waist down, since he was six months old. Currently, he is six years old. He's still going strong and we've been taking care of him since then.

Caring for him alone was enough to know what the challenges are for caring for pets with special needs. My parents and I had a really hard time adapting and adjusting our lifestyle to fit our cat's needs. When I think it was two years into the incident, we didn't really know how to support him, where we could get resources from, and how to help him. So we ended up causing more suffering to him, such as urinary tract infection due to poor maintenance of his hygiene basically

But I think once we got the hang of it, we managed to change up the environment, give him a proper space to live in, and cater to his needs as well. I think that really helped with his recovery. So that's how he actually continued to recover and became more stable. And then that's when my family actually adapted to this lifestyle as well.

Do you know if there is any support or help from animal welfare organisations for such caregivers?

 Not that I know of, to be honest. I am aware that there are organisations who would step up to support animals with needs, but no organisations really cater to just special needs.

We are sort of the first in Singapore to ever have an event solely on special needs pets and also to raise awareness for special needs pets. We didn't really have any support from any welfare organisations for this whole entire project because we couldn't find any. But I do know of shelters that come up with maybe walks for pets with wheelcarts. Their focus is not so much on solely raising awareness for special needs pets.

What gaps are your project trying to address?

 I think it's the fact that people do not know what a good quality of life is. People are not well equipped in Singapore to know how to care for special needs pets, how to measure quality of life. And when their pets are handicapped or have special needs, they do not know where to get the resources from. I think in Singapore, there's a lack of conversations regarding special needs pets and caregivers as well. There's a lot of focus on the pet like how people are abandoning them, but nobody really talks about whether or not the caregiver is burnt out, or the pet has so much more life for them.

My project basically aims to raise awareness for special needs pets and also help these caregivers manage their emotions and their resources as well. I am designing an event and we want to provide them a one stop hub for people to be able to get their resources from and for it to be a topic that is more talked about in Singapore where people don't shy away from such conversations. And also because there's a lack of community in Singapore, we want to be able to bring these people together for them to talk about it together, for them to share resources, share their experiences, to tell people that you're not alone. Like this is something that we've been through. We've done things right. So can you.

 We want to provide hope for these caregivers as well. Although not everything is about rainbows and sunshines and there are down periods, things can definitely get better and there are success stories out there of caregivers caring for their special needs pets. It's a celebration of the lives of special needs pets and their caregivers' efforts as well.