Another 12 hours on the road

This week, Karin & I set off in all good faith to meet up with a lady to arrange a fund raising stall in December, later this year but that indeed was the only thing we did not achieve today.

We took along Wallace from the shelter and he was on his way back home. When we got there, the family that cares for him were not around in the street where we collected him but Sven & Sandra came to see him. Unfortunately, so did some old buddies of Wallace and they chased him away. They obviously didn't recognise him with all his hair back and looking fit & firm!

Then we were diverted to meet up with some folks that were scared that a dog they were feeding in their street was becoming dangerous & biting people. We went along and found this female adult dog was being friendly with people she knew but didn't like strangers at all. They asked if we could take her for sterilisation and the see after that if she was able to return to the street. We were not sure if some folks in the street had teased her or caused her to be scared but lets hope after her return she is a little calmer after socialising with other dogs and people at the shelter.

So back to the shelter & pick up Victoria, the dog we had blow darted last week at Wat Silom in Hang Dong. We planned to return her and then pick up a brown female dog at that temple that was suffering TvT.

As we arrived at the temple, we saw a brown dog asleep behind a pillar. Quietly and without shoes, I crept up behind the pillar, peered round and saw it was a female, laying fast asleep. My first dart landed perfectly in her hind hip area and off she ran, startled awake by the dart.

We ran off to the rear of the temple area and spotted the dog leaving the temple for a nearby village. After a few minutes, down she went and lay at the side of the road, wondering what was happening. Now half the village were out looking at these foreigners blow darting dogs and one boy even jumped to the conclusion that the dog had rabies and was getting taken away for their safety!

Trouble is...... it was not the dog we were looking for! She was the one barking at me in the temple courtyard as I went back to drive the truck around to pick her up.

Last week we paid a follow up visit to 2 dogs adopted some time ago in the Sanpatong area and brought one of them back for sterilisation. This week we returned her. The family had missed her very much as did her mates, She barked a while until they came running to her & then they went off for a stroll together down by the river. Awwwww!

During this last week, 2 puppies were adopted and whilst near Sanpatong we visited them at their 2 separate homes.

The first, which typically was extremely hard to find, even from the best hand drawn maps, was a family home tucked away in the back of beyond. After asking several villagers stood waiting for the rain to fall, one of them took us to see the village head man. He in turn got out a big list of names and eventually directed us to the house. By now it was raining very heavily. It had gone dark quickly and the roads were hard to follow in the bad light. When we found the house, it was more by chance than good navigation.

Anyway, we were able to vaccinate the young puppy and see the family at home with another new puppy they had taken in.

Next stop was not too far away, at the staff accommodation of a toy factory. Out the front of a row of about 20 homes, sat all the residents, eating, drinking, sleeping and generally socialising. The rain had stopped by now and it was very humid. We met the other puppy & vaccinated him and then met his playmates too.

Journey 98kms