All About Dogs Exhibition at Singapore Philatelic Museum tells a tales of canines with stamps. Running now from 14th Feb to 1st December 2018, the display is a temporary exhibition at the stamp museum. The museum is essentially a self-contained museum and an active post office located on the side streets of Coleman Street just off Hill Street.
The gallery itself is tucked on the upper second floor of the tiny museum located at the last gallery room. It is accessible via a small staircase which is reminiscent of the old colonial style buildings of the yesteryear. It replaces last year’s animal exhibition of the similar theme.
Bonus points for readers who can remember my visit last year, where I explored Chicken And Egg: A Fowl Tale, their chicken exhibition. Just like the Hens tale exhibition, All About Dogs is also motivated by the zodiac animal of the current lunar year. It is commendable that the museum makes a point to update their permanent galleries throughout the year in line with Chinese zodiac traditions.
A journey with Man’s Best Friend
All About Dogs introduces you to how “man’s best friend” came about. It does these through a combination of print, audio and visual elements displayed on the gallery’s four walls. The galleries educate as it informs.
Additionally, on the human-social aspects, it explores and introduces the early close bond between dogs and human. Dogs have their origins from their wolf ancestors. The bond developed over a thousand years ago. Domesticated from wolves. Through years of domestication, this amazing furry animal has evolved to more than a pet but a rather trainable and loyal companion.
History has it, early wolves fed on human leftover scraps which in turn provide protection of their life stock against predators. They became less fearful of man and able to tame them to become their pack leader. Today, this domestication and selective breeding has yielded over 200 breeds of dogs to date. Henceforth. the gallery teaches about how this furry creature on how they tick and how they became a part of our lives.
Moreover, there is a section devoted to working dogs too. It teaches about hardworking working dogs in military and social services. Examples includes dogs trained to provides protection, security and herding for farm animals. Additionally, these includes sniffer dogs at immigration control, search and rescue dogs used by disaster rescue teams like our civil defense unit. There are even jobs which rings closer to home such as guide and assistance dogs on the streets.
Learn how dogs sense their environment
These amazing feats are brought about by the keen senses dogs we know of. Additionally, the gallery teaches about the dog’s keen senses used to navigate and understand their environment.
Examples includes such as their sharp smell and hearing abilities. These senses can be up to a thousand times better than a human’s. However, this makes up for their less-keen sense of sight, with dogs able to see lesser colours with a degree of colour blindness. There are some photographs showing the colour variation of what canines see between humans.
Moreover, the display is a children’s exhibition. The gallery is laid out with a family focus in mind. Sitting squarely in the center is an activity play area with a large central open area. Also, there are several children play elements. This include an assortment of large children friendly dog stuffed toys for the young ones. There are even coloured dog bones suspended from the ceiling!
At times, you can hear the thumping footsteps from the kids playing and running about in the gallery play area. The museum wooden floor boards are really thin and you might mistaken the noise for a thumping elephant!
Dog Stamps galore!
Furthermore, being a stamp museum, lined along it walls are various stamps of interests, picturing dogs from all about the world. Examples include collection of stamps devoted to different breeds of dogs such as Scandinavian working dogs stamp sets (e.g. huskies). Featured are also canines in entertainment, such as cartoon dogs (like snoopy).
Additionally, if you are looking to get your adorable-fix, there are also stamp sets featuring adorable puppy fur balls. There are both foreign and local aspects of the stamps on display which a section devoted to the hardworking canines of SG dogs.
Moreover, Singapore Post also has on display their limited run of commemorative dog series stamp sets for this lunar year of the dog.
All in all, the exhibition sniffs out for you what the 2018 Earth Dog year has in store. It is as part of this lunar’s new year rotation of all the 12 animal zodiac signs. You are good for the exhibition under 30 minutes, making it ideal to be part of your visit to the Singapore Philatelic Museum with several other neat galleries to explore in addition too.
Though I find the exhibits lacking a sense of humor seen in last year’s chicken exhibition, it is still a nice visit, especially for kids.
Entry to the museum is a small fee of $8 per adult ($6 for children) which grants you access to all the permanent and temporary galleries in the museum too. All About Dogs ends till the end of the year and is free for all Singaporeans & Permanent Residents.
All About Dogs Children’s Exhibition
Level 2 Singapore Philatelic Museum
Runs from 14 Feb 2018 – 01 Dec 2018
Opening hours daily: 10am – 7pm
Ticket prices Adults: S$8, Child: S$6
Free admission for Singaporeans & Permanent Residents
![Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://www.shaunchng.com/museums/all-about-dogs-exhibition-at-singapore-philatelic-museum/&media=https://www.shaunchng.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/all-about-dogs-exhibition-philatelic-museum.jpg&description=All About Dogs Exhibition at Singapore Philatelic Museum introduces you to "man’s best friend", through a combination of print, audio-visual and stamps.){kind=link}