Another sad day

Amandine, Karin & I visited a house quite near to the shelter & met up with some local residents who were concerned about the welfare of a dogs being kept in a small cage all day, every day and its only release was briefly at weekends when the house holders were not working and then only chased & beaten with a stick.

The sign on the cage says "Beware Dangerous Dog". There was food in the cage ( until we upset him & he knocked it over along with his water bowl.

Poor guy. After our visit, we drove to find a man who likes this particular breed ( Baan Kaoew) in a hope he might be able to help the dog by giving it a better home, as it was rumoured the current family are not really interested. ( Understatement ) Last we heard was there was at least a discussion going on between the 2 parties.

Next we visited a temple that we had not been to before, hearing that there had been a previously adopted dog being dumped there.

There we found that dog along with about 6 others and a mother with 3 pups. All the dogs were infested with ticks but the mum & pups seemed to be more troubled than the others. Didn't manage to get many photo's as I was more interested in de-ticking than clicking.

We sat down and after a good spray, we literally plucked the ticks off the pups with tweezers. There were so many in each ear and between each toe, it was hard to imagine how the poor things could hear, let alone walk.

The mother had a row of ticks clustered along her belly, in between her warm & moist droopy tits, quite amazing.

Unfortunately, the conditions in the grounds of this temple are not exactly ideal, as if any temple grounds are, the toilet block being just a dump site and the cloisters just rotting rubbish.

During our stay, many people were coming & going and in particular, a group of school children who were making merit for the forthcoming festival period of Khao Pansa. Some came and looked at us plucking ticks and wondered why foreigners were interested in doing this.

Later it was the turn of the forestry department and the fire & rescue guys put their best protective suits on for the temple visit.

This temple needs regular visits to help these poor dogs.

Karin & Ally Roadshow

Today we managed to come into contact with several doggy people and meet many dogs whilst working through our route plan.(A document that I must tell you is a work of art which Karin spends endless hours into the night before planning)


However, today we were also making preparations for next weeks adoption fair by seeking produce to sell and checking on facilities at the venue. We have the green light for our second of these events. Saturday 23 June 2007, at Airport Plaza Chiang Mai, on the 2nd floor adjacent to Tokyo Optic and near Robinsons. But more of that later.


Our first doggy contact today was a lovely retired gentle man who should really be part of the Care for Dogs team ( we're working on that) who has great interest in dogs in his area, bringing medical problems to our attention and trying to help these poor creatures where ever they live.


He took us to a house in his neighbourhood, where we saw an American Pit Bull Terrier chained up and kept in this way 24x7. After talking to the residents there, it transpires the original owner moved to Australia and left the dog behind. They want the dog to be happy and feed him what they can but they are very keen to find the dog a better home, with people who know how to care for him.



He is not old, maybe about 2 and is very strong & healthy. He likes people & plays well but needs space to run around and people to love him.


We suggested getting a muzzle for him, to reduce the fear that local people had of the dog biting them and then at least getting him off the chain and giving him some freedom. In the meantime we will include him in our ever growing list of dogs needing adoption to good homes.


Next stop was to deliver back home a dog that had been away for sterilisation, warmly greeted by her friends and then it was off to Wat Nong Ba Kang, not far from the Railway station in Chiang Mai, where we were also returning a dog after sterilisation.


Ya came to us last year with a very severe case of TvT and after prolonged chemotherapy treatment, sterilisation, she has now regained good health and as it seems nobody has been showing her any interest in respect of adoption, we are returning her to her old home at the temple.


On arrival it was clear she had been missed. The monks and people in the area remembered her by name and her doggy friends welcomed her back too.


Whilst there, we gave all the dogs some food, gave as many mange & heartworm vaccinations as possible and left a bag of food for the monks to feed the dogs themselves. There are some serious cases for intensive mange therapy,so when we return the 3 we collected here last time, we will take more of these away to the shelter for regular administration of Ivomec.


We were now thinking of returning home as it was 9 pm already but received an emergency call from the security guards at the entrance to the US Consulate in the city. When we arrived , we found Uan, street dog laying in a a doorway, very wet from sweat, urine, vomit & saliva. She was barely breathing. The guards said she had been like this all day and did not know what to do & called us after someone suggested our name to them. They said they liked the dog and wanted to help her. There was a piece of bbq chicken in front of her nose.


We rushed her to the only animal facility available on a 24 hour basis in Chiang Mai and to our amazement & delight the on duty team today jumped into action with "ER" characteristics and tried to save her life. Sadly within minutes of arrival, she passed away. Maybe she waited for someone to help and then relaxed and slipped away.


The vet in charge, a very competent & friendly young guy said that this was definitely organic phosphate poisoning and unless dogs are helped early in their suffering, there is little they can do to stop the cruel death.


We took Uan back to the shelter and found a peaceful spot to bury him in an orchard nearby.


Uan is now another statistic of the growing numbers of poisonings occurring in & around Chiang Mai. It is a scary thought, when you have dogs of your own, that people that either have a grudge against others, don't like dogs or just want to be nasty, can cause such unnecessary loss of life. It is also scary that authorities are not interested in taking any reasonable actions to investigate, let alone prosecute in the interest of dogs. So far, Chiang Mai has not experienced mass poisonings that have occurred in locations such as Koh Samui and I hope it never will but there is no safety net for these poor creatures should such a campaign ever be implemented.

Rescue of dogs..... Mae Jo Chiang Mai

Karin & I were joined today by a volunteer Heather, who wanted to see how things were on the streets of Chiang Mai.

The day started with a visit to Kad Farang where we knew a couple of white dogs hung out around the area. Sure enough we found one of them and she looked very skinny & neglected. We gave her some food & noted that she was possibly sterilised already but as we had a full schedule today, we will return again soon with more food and after she becomes more approachable, we will be able to give her a proper assessment.

On the way to Mae Jo, we caught up with Tameer & Hannah, who is now starting to use her remaining back leg a little after hands on therapy & a lot of love & encouragement provided by Tameer.

Next stop was Maejo, at Wat Vivek. Here we made several feeding stops in the temple area, catching up with some of the regular faces.

Not too far away from here, we visited a building site where Karin had in recent weeks been speaking with a family living in a rundown bamboo shack, with several dogs & Karin had sterilised one of them. This week, when Carolyn, another volunteer visited the area during her temple feeding schedule, it turned out that the family had moved away and left the dogs behind.

One of the dogs had recently had several puppies and these were now just left to fend for themselves.

Today when we arrived at the shack, where we were joined by Carolyn & her brother who is currently in Thailand on holiday, we found only one little pup hiding under the floor in amongst the debris of life ( you name it, it was there!) and after a little encouragement and the friendly face of the recently sterilised dog, we managed to catch the pup & load it onto the truck. The mum turned up and we managed to catch her by putting food in a cage and then using rope, closed the door behind her and pulling the cage over on its side, trapping her inside. Sounds rough but she wasn't hurt and we hope she will benefit from our efforts. We also found a little brown cutie and we loaded her onto the truck along with the recently sterilised one. There being no sign of the other pups, we asked around for any sighting of them. We were directed to an area where the construction workers thought they might be but alas they were not there.

However, fate was playing with us again and we were somehow meant to visit this house. Asking the occupant & not trusting the answer, Karin looked around the back of the house & saw a wooden crate type box with a dog kept inside. The dog was not able to stand fully, there were faeces on the floor and it was dark & hot and made us feel extremely sad, angry and our emotions ran wild. We asked why the dog was kept here & the woman in the house said the dog ate chickens. We asked if we could take the dog away from them to help but she said we should return later & speak with the husband.

A neighbour, wearing a box type straw hat said one of his dogs was apparently not eating and we saw it had runny eyes , so we put her on the truck. The man in the hat said we should go with him to the village head ( who runs a local convenience store) who apparently needed us to help him treat his dog for mange. We gave one of the 3 dogs there a jab of Ivomec & headed off to look again for the pups.

No sign of them back at the construction site, we pressed on to Wat Gaset Mai, where we intended to give some food to the dogs and also collect 2 for sterilisation. This temple, as well as the previous one, has so many dogs, the true numbers are hard to count. To say that there are in the region of between 80 & 100 at the 2 temples would not be an exaggeration. Care for Dogs has previously carried out sterilisation of most of the dogs here but the 2 we wanted to catch today were shy & scared of people, so not easy to collect. After recent success with the blow dart, we thought we could put an end to the tiring efforts over the last couple of years to catch them.

The first one was no problem, we caught her unaware and after a little running around, the drug took effect and she fell asleep. The second one was a different story. To cut a long story short ( long, as in 1 hour walking around & around with her constantly barking and running off & maintaining her 20 metres safety zone, us hiding behind trees and offering delicious food) we failed to catch her.

So, back to the construction site and this time, a young school boy was there to help us. Unfortunately, it is not seen as acceptable in Thai culture to hug each other or show emotions in public but I do wish I could have given him a big hug. He is 11.

We found another 2 pups and eventually caught them, after a lot of running around and me taking a dive in a pond up to my waist, as long grass laid on the top of the water like a trap. Glad it was me not the puppies! Then we saw yet another puppy but somehow lost sight of this one and heard from the construction workers that there were in fact 2 more still to be caught. Oh well, Carolyn will go back tomorrow & see if she can catch them. Not content with a full truck of needy doggies, we also took along the father of the pups, who literally laid down in front of us, asking to come back to the shelter.

Time was now getting on so we returned to the dog in the wooden prison cell and this time we met a man who after some discussion, said he wanted to keep the dog for breeding as it was a special breed and showed us that he did take it out occasionally, by putting the dog on a chain and keeping it tethered to a post. Meanwhile 2 other dogs ran around free.

Karin & I played with the dog who was desperate for attention and both of us felt extremely agitated by the mans constant refusal to let us take the dog away, if he would not let it run free, like his other dogs. Eventually, after some negotiating, we paid him 1,000 baht and took the dog away with us.

Back at Kad Farang we caught up with the 2 white street dogs, who welcomed an unexpected meal and thanked us for stopping by.

Back in the saddle

Teamed up with Karin today to visit a good friend of ours and carry out some vaccinations of young pups he has been caring for. After that we headed off to a temple in Chaing Mai city, where we intended to look at the dog population and possibly introduce a local school who are keen to start a 'Temple Aid Project' and start the process of sterilising the residents & improving their health.

Well we certainly found what we were looking for. Dogs came from every corner of the courtyard and there were some even tucked away, waiting for the monks there to show us. 3 new born pups, no more than a month old, sleeping on a dark & dirty kitchen stone floor.

Running around the car park was a little cutie, pregnant and waiting to populate the place with even more pups. Mange cases rife, limps, ticks, fleas & possible TvT & pyometra too. There will no doubt be blood parasite cases here and all will need to be brought up to speed on their vaccinations. Who knows, there might even be heartworm.

After giving as many dogs as we could some dry food, we managed to take the expectant mum, a bad mange case and a possible TvT & pyometra case with us in the car, stopping off at the vet with the latter 2 for full diagnosis.

Sure enough, there was good cause for concern, the poor girl with a pussy vulva has TvT and we will arrange for her to be sterilised asap and assess if she has pyometra whilst under anaesthetic.

This temple will certainly welcome the efforts of the enthusiastic youngsters we hope will take on this site as their first project. We estimated there to be in excess of 30 dogs either in the temple grounds or visitors from surrounding homes that would benefit from regular feeding & some organised medical attention. The monks were certainly appreciative of our interest.

Karin & Ally Roadshow

This week we were only able to fit in an afternoons activity due to other pressing events and today we were accompanied by another student from Prem Centre, taking part in a community project.

Dianne 14, said she wanted to be involved with animals and thought we might give her an insight into how she could do so.

First off we called into the offices of the local authority to visit Cindy, living here a while now, to give her a surprise meal and also a heart worm vaccination.

Then, just up the hill, to Wat Doi Tam, a temple with many novices and lady monks too. Here we were interested in seeing how we could help them improve the health of the dogs and cats being cared for there and also to enquire about availability of cats & kittens for adoption, as we had received a request just the day before.

We were able to give heart worm prevention jabs to several dogs and found the lady monks to be very interested in animal welfare. Next week we will come & collect a dog with a growth on its elbow and see if anything should / can be done. We will also include these animals in our sterilisation program.

We noted that one of the dogs looked like a Rottweiler and he was very undernourished. His bones stuck out all over the place and was very scared of human contact. We will need to try regular trips here to hope he come round to meet us & maybe investigate his problem(s).

Next stop was at the family home of the 2 tiny pups Happy & Sleepy, to see the remaining 3 to administer worming tablets. The family said that all 3 had already gone to new homes.

With mixed feelings we pushed on to another stop, at Wat Silom. A temple in Hang Dong where we are in the middle of eradicating TvT in many dogs there. Regular readers of this diary, may recall the blow darting of the wrong dog last week. Well today we found the right dog, asleep in an outbuilding along with 2 of her friends, completely unaware of our presence.

The rain was lashing down now but we felt it was an ideal opportunity. We loaded the dart and got as near to her as possible. Missed again!!! this time the dart caught her hip but so briefly, that there was no injection made. She ran off and we failed to find her again.

With a loaded dart, we headed for Kad Farang, the place we were also interested in picking up dogs for sterilisation. As we entered the parking area, we could not believe our eyes, for there in front of us was the reported female, mangy, scrawny & looking hungry & hopeless. We offered her some food and she was ravenous. As awful as it sounds, we darted her and after a little running around, managed to pick her up outside Black Canyon. We dried her off and wrapped her to keep her warm & placed her in the back of the truck. Suffering from a lack of imagination, we called her Canyon.

Time was flying fast now and we managed to make one more stop before taking Dianne back to meet her Mum. We went to the home of Moom, the male TvT case we so want to help, to see if we could collect him to stay at the shelter for a few weeks during treatment.

Back at the shelter to drop off the doggies, we caught up with the progress of minor construction work going on, to put a new roof over the area where the dogs hang out the most & also saw the young pups Happy & Sleepy, now both fully alert & walking, looking strong & healthy.

When we found him, it was more than obvious he would be better off at the shelter. He had several serious bite wounds from fighting with is house mate Mee and they were in need of treatment too.

Dianne said she enjoyed the afternoon and asked for us to complete a report of her visit for her teacher. She was most welcome to come along and we enjoyed her company.

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