"Where should we start?" she wonders.
Rosanna or Oz, as she is known to friends, decides that the Moluccan cockatoos should go first. She takes Jake from his cage and carries him to her room where Jayme is already waiting. "Jake is magulo and he will follow me anywhere. Jayme is the mabait one," she informs us.
We move to another room where Tyler is waiting. "This is Tyler, my ragdoll cat." She picks him up, gives him a hug, and together they pose for the camera. "He is a big cat because he eats a lot," Oz says.
She turns around and asks: "Can you take a picture of the grave of Paxson, my Golden Retriever?"
Of course.
Russo and Gracida, two English Mastiffs are waiting for us in the garden.
"Russo is behaving funny because Gracida is in heat." She tells the dogs to behave and they do. She gives them a bear hug and the huge doggies don't look so frightening anymore.
House pets pictorial over, we head for the stables at Polo Club. "That's where four of my horses are," she says.
Oz is a modern day Noah, minus the ark (for now, at least). She has10 horses, 24 dogs, five cats, 11 fishes, four chickens, three birds, two Guinea pigs, a duck and a pot-bellied pig. Does she intend to start her own zoo or does she know something ordinary mortals don't? (Perhaps, a big storm is coming and she's gathering as many species of animals as possible!)
When she was a little girl, Oz only wanted to play with toy animals – not with dolls or robots. Now 35, she has not quite outgrown her love for beasts of all shapes and sizes.
"I grew up next door to a farm where there were many horses," she recalls. Even at a young age, Oz would ask the men in the farm to "make her angkas" on their horses. Matter of fact, her earliest childhood memory is watching horses on parade.
It wasn't only horses that she liked. For as long as she can remember, Oz was not only a mother and friend to these furry creatures, oftentimes, she was also their savior. When she encountered an abandoned dog, she found space for it in her kennel. She went out of her way to find homes for a litter of stray kittens, lost without their mother. She bought a duck from some kids who were playing with it in a baseball field in Calamba, Laguna. And when her Golden Retrievers accidentally devoured a mother hen for breakfast, she promptly adopted its four orphaned chicks.
It was her love for animals that inspired Oz to study in the US and become a veterinary technician. She thought that by working at the vet's, she would be around animals a lot. "It was a good career choice. But it was hard for me because the animals were either sick or dying," she says.
If Mother Teresa of Calcutta was saint and savior to impoverished children, Oz plays the same role in the lives of animals she calls her friends.
When asked if she has "favorites" in her brood, she explains: "Each one of my pets has a unique personality. I can't say I love one more than the other, but I am closest to my dogs since they are, by nature, the most malambing. They give unconditional love and are always happy to see me. And they don't give me a hard time when I come home late at night. That's the difference between animals and people."
She is quick to point out that she loves her horses dearly, but horses are not really people-oriented. They are trained to do a job.
If it were up to Oz, she would have all 24 dogs sleep with her in the bedroom. Since that would be impractical, and also quite dangerous, (some of her breeds are considered "fighting dogs," i.e. her two Akitas, two Pit Bulls and two Rotweilers, to name a few), she keeps them in a kennel at the family farm in Canlubang, Laguna.
In her animal farm, her unique collection of extraordinary dogs promenade in the vast 100 hectares or so of land. Oz is also mother to three Labradors, a couple of Australian Shepherds, an Afghan hound, a Great Dane, a Basset Hound, a Maltese and two Lassa Apsos.
Aside from the abandoned stray cats or kittens she has adopted, Oz has some extraordinary felines. She has two Persian cats, a ragdoll and three Bengal cats (a close relative of the Bengal Tiger). Her collection of birds, an African Gray Parrot and two Moluccan Cockatoos (Jake and Jayme), follow her around like her dogs, and so does her pot-bellied pig, whom she calls – what else – Baboy.
If her fish could jump out of the water, perhaps they, too, would follow Oz around like all her domesticated pets. After all, these are no goldfish. Instead, she has 10 High Fin (fresh water) sharks and a Paco fish, which is a relative of the deadly piranha. Needless to say, it is best to leave them in their respective tanks!
But when it comes to horses, Oz considers them her teammates, not just pets. She considers teamwork with her horses as valuable as teamwork with her male polo teammates. This is why she has been working on developing her horses' skills as well as her own skills in polo since 1990. By the way, her horse teammates are not just from Canlubang, some of them come all the way from Argentina.
Do the horses' gender matter to a polo player?
"For me, it does not make a difference if my horse is a mare or a stallion. But a mare in heat can pose some problems for me during a game," Oz says. She is quick to point out that Luisa, her main horse a few years back, has not given her any problems. "I also love to spoil my horses," she confesses.
The bond between Oz and her horses was evident when we went to visit her three horses Luisa, Manola and Escondida at the Polo Club. Before she mounted Manola, she gave her a pat on the nose. She did the same to her two other horses.
"My horses and I live similar lives. During off-season (from Polo games and practices), they graze in the paddocks, while I party (ha-ha!). But when the polo season starts, usually from the month of October through April, then we are all in the same field, banging bodies with other horses and other people, trying our best to win every match. Unlike my other pets, my horses and I depend on each other. I need them as much as they need me. They may not be the best string of polo ponies around, but they're mine and that's what makes them special."
Oz may be in a hurry to make it to the top of the polo field, but she is cool and laid-back when it comes to life. She is at home in the great outdoors and shoots the breeze with friends and animals she loves. – With Kathy Moran