| NAME: | Kabang |
| SPECIES: | Aspin, mixed-breed Philippine street dog |
| DATE: | December 14, 2011 |
| LOCATION: | Zamboanga City, Philippines |
| SITUATION: | Two girls in the path of a motorcycle |
| WHO WAS SAVED: | eleven-year-old Dina Bunggal and three-year-old Princess Diansing |
| LEGACY: | The Philippines’ most famous street dog, universally adored for unthinkable bravery |
This life-saving rescue provides a stunning example of selfless courage. And yet, what makes it a truly unique, awe-inspiring tale of cross-species compassion are the circumstances that made the rescue possible and the reaction that followed in its wake.
Let’s start with the rescue itself, which occurred on December 14, 2011, in Zamboanga City in the Philippines.
LOOK BOTH WAYS BEFORE CROSSING THE STREET
Two girl cousins—eleven-year-old Dina Bunggal and three-year-old Princess Diansing—were walking on their own close to home. As the pair went to cross the busy Nuñez Extension, a divided four-lane city artery, they did not see a motorcycle bearing down on them. Just as the motorcycle was about to hit them, the Bunggal family dog, Kabang, emerged out of nowhere and jumped at the motorcycle, knocking it over just in time to keep it from slamming into the girls.
Dina and Princess both fell; they were bruised but unhurt. Likewise, the fallen motorcycle rider emerged unscathed. Kabang, however, struck the motorcycle’s front wheel head-on, and as the bike rolled, the dog’s snout and upper jaw got caught in the spokes and, to put it bluntly, were completely torn off.
Jovito Urpiano, a worker eating lunch nearby, witnessed the incident and said that Kabang jumped with such force that “I thought somebody threw the dog on the motorcycle.” No one had, and Jovito felt certain that the dog acted intentionally to save the girls.
In his nearby workshop, Rudy Bunggal, Dina’s father, also saw what happened and rushed to the scene. “The bones holding [Kabang’s] upper snout were crushed,” Rudy said, “and we could not do anything to save it. We just pulled her off the wheel.”
Once freed, Kabang ran away and disappeared.
That Kabang was even around to save the girls was a puzzle. Rudy said Kabang didn’t normally wander away from their home, and “we could not believe she went out when she sensed that the girls were in danger.”
Afterward, no one could find Kabang. As the days turned into weeks, the Bunggals assumed that Kabang must have died. The top half of her face was gone. Surely, the blood loss alone would have been enough to kill her; no dog could survive such catastrophic injuries.
But after two weeks, Kabang unexpectedly reappeared. Her destroyed face was shocking. She had only a bottom jaw, and her wounds were infected and improperly healed. The Bunggals took Kabang to veterinarian Anton Lim, who treated her with antibiotics, but he couldn’t close the surreal, gaping wound. City animal control officials suggested that Kabang be euthanized.
The Bunggals refused. “It does not matter if she’s ugly now,” Rudy said. “What is important to us is she saved our children, and we cannot thank her enough for that.”
“Without her,” Dina said, “maybe I will not be alive today.” Her mother, Christina, simply called Kabang “a hero.”
THE PLIGHT OF PHILIPPINE STREET DOGS
By all rights and Philippine custom, Kabang shouldn’t have been alive to rescue anyone.
Rudy found her in a swamp when he was harvesting kangkong, or swamp cabbage. The weeks-old puppy—a black, tan, and white shepherd mix—had been abandoned and left to die. She was the type of mongrel that is scorned in the Philippines and disparagingly called an “askal,” which is short for asong kalye, or “street dog,” in Tagalog. Today, the more politically correct term is “aspin” (which is short for asong pinoy or “native dog”), and Rudy brought the puppy home to raise her for meat.
Eating azucena, or dog meat, is not unusual in impoverished Philippine communities, and the Bunggals were certainly poor. They lived in a shanty, where Rudy worked as a “vulcanizer” repairing punctured tires, and Christina sold candy. Together, their daily income was about $3.50.
“The dogs we raised did not last longer than three months,” Rudy said. “It’s our only way of eating meat. Life is difficult, and I have to feed my family.”
The Bunggals named the dog Kabang (which means “spotted” in Visayan), fed her coffee creamer, and let her sleep with Dina and Princess, something none of their other dogs had been allowed to do. Kabang guarded their home; she would sit on Rudy’s vulcanizing tools to prevent thefts. She only left the shanty to play with the children.
When three months came and went and Rudy still hadn’t slaughtered the dog, Christina and even the neighbors were puzzled. Typically, everyone shared, and looked forward to, a little azucena. Instead, for reasons Rudy could not explain, Kabang’s cheerful, devoted personality had softened his heart, and he lost the urge to kill the dog for meat.
One neighbor said, “Rudy became a different person when Kabang came. He became humane to animals.”
As the aspin’s status shifted from future meal to household companion, the Bunggals started feeding Kabang their own food, even precious milk. “We did not mind if she was an addition to our expenses,” Christina said. “We regarded her as part of the family.”
After Kabang saved Dina and Princess, the family absolutely venerated the one-year-old dog.
“I believe she was God’s gift to us,” Rudy said.
A “SUPERSTAR” WITH HALF A FACE
After Kabang’s incredible rescue, word of her heroics spread across the Philippines, and people came to visit and have photos taken with her. Some people brought food, medicines, and vitamins for Kabang; others donated money and clothing to the family.
“She has become a superstar,” Rudy said. “We are so thankful. We did not ask for those things, but still we are thankful.”
The Bunggals would soon discover the true meaning of “superstar.” In February 2012, a nurse in upstate New York, Karen Kenngott, was moved by Kabang’s story and launched Care for Kabang, a social-media-fueled fundraising effort. Kabang herself was, as always, in good spirits—calm, happy, and despite the still-gaping wound, healthy enough to become pregnant—but she was unlikely to survive long without extremely expensive and perhaps unique surgeries.
Care for Kabang went viral, and by September 2012, it had met its goals, raising over $20,000 from over forty countries. Then, on October 8, accompanied by Philippine veterinarian Anton Lim, Kabang was flown to the state-of-the-art Davis William R. Pritchard Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital at the University of California at Davis.
Complications arose immediately. US doctors discovered that Kabang had a golf ball-size tumor, which first needed to be treated with months of chemo-therapy. Thus, amazingly, if not for her grisly condition, Kabang’s cancer never would have been discovered, and she would have died anyway.
As Kabang regained her strength from the chemotherapy, doctors strategized what to do with her face. Some felt her condition was “beyond repair,” and euthanasia remained the most humane option, but the Bunggals would not hear of it. So, to avoid long-term aftercare, the US vets decided against a face transplant or reconstruction. Instead, they would repair the wound using skin from the side and top of her head, remove two infected molars, reconstruct her left eyelid, and use stents to re-create two nostrils. Most of this was accomplished in one successful five-hour surgery in March 2013.
Afterward, one of the chief surgeons said, “She’s not a pretty dog, but she is a happy dog.”
Indeed, Kabang recovered successfully and was as joyful as ever. She could eat by grabbing food with her tongue, and she could even catch a ball using her lower jaw and her two remaining upper molars.
“I don’t think it’s an accident that she is alive,” Dr. Lim said. “It all happened for a reason, and this opportunity is not being lost on us.”
In other words, Kabang had more lives to save, and in June 2013, she was flown home to the Philippines.
THE “PRIDE OF ZAMBOANGA” RETURNS
The “Pride of Zamboanga,” as the city’s mayor called Kabang, received an official hero’s welcome upon returning home. She rode in a pickup truck festooned with balloons as a motorcade threaded through the city. At the town hall, Kabang received an honorary ambassadorship to promote animal welfare and responsible pet ownership, and afterward, she joined other dogs and their owners for a big party in the park.
Ultimately, city officials hoped Kabang would help transform the reputation of aspins, encouraging their adoption and saving fellow Philippine street dogs from a long history of mistreatment and from occasionally becoming meals.
Yet Kabang’s homecoming was also bittersweet. During Kabang’s time in the United States, Christina and Rudy Bunggal separated; they cited their financial problems and Rudy’s ongoing drinking. But now the world was watching, and everyone wanted to know: Who would care for Kabang, and under what conditions?
Rudy Bunggal still owned her. He said many people had offered to adopt Kabang, “but I said no. I told them Kabang will stay with us.”
No one wanted Kabang returned to her previous shanty life. For city officials, this was one problem they could solve: They gave Rudy Bunggal a house—under one condition, the mayor said, “That he will take good care of Kabang.”
Rudy felt as if he’d won the lottery, and Christina agreed to visit regularly with Dina and Princess.
Like a fairytale, Kabang transformed the life of the man who saved her and whose own unexpected act of altruism set off a chain of events too unlikely to pass as fiction. Afterward, the circle of compassion Kabang engendered encompassed much more than one heartrending moment of bravery. She moved people around the world and from all walks of life with her rare, indomitable spirit, just as she continues to challenge our assumptions of what courage, joy, and beauty look like.