Feeding the puppies!
This isn't just a cute montage of pictures but there is also a story and perhaps a lesson behind it. We feed all the stray dogs that we can in our area of influence and there were times that we were worried that we were going to run out of resources to continue this work. Those were during the Covid times when Thailand shut the country down and it negatively affected to many things. Our primary source of resources are donations from visiting tourists and when that was cut off we found ourselves in a bad place. A lot of the volunteers here at Krabi Animal Welfare pitched in our savings to keep the organization afloat during those times and thankfully we weathered the storm and now have enough funding on a regular basis. We certainly aren't "rich" and are a non-profit anyway, but at least we can look at our accounting sheets and know that we have enough money to keep the lights on as well as buy food for all the hungry dogs and cats out there.
I'll apologize ahead of time for the poor quality of these images but they are all stills taken from a video taken by a 4 year old phone.
Our primary focus in all of our work here is sterilization of mostly female dogs. Our secondary mission is to educate the population of southern Thailand about the importance of doing this sort of thing. We can’t get to all of the dogs though and as they say in Jurassic Park “life finds a way” and there are often a new group of puppies that we are made aware of by people that live in that area. For me, I am just happy that they know about us and let us know. We will NOT come and pick up the puppies because we do not have the space or resources to be adopting all the animals in this area, but we will turn up with translators and Thai volunteers to talk to the villagers, to give them food for the dogs, and also provide medical care that includes sterilization for the females while we are there.
I personally get a lot of joy out of handling happy puppies and I just hope that they can keep this friendly attitude towards humans. It can go either way in Thailand. The dogs that are treated well by humans will always gravitate towards them, the ones that are kicked around and abused by humans will be afraid of them.
I feel as though our org has made great progress in changing the mindset of the rural areas where they will stop seeing stray dogs as a nuisance and start to see them as members of the community. Of course we will run into cultural problems when these are areas are Muslim majority areas and at that point we try to relocate the dogs if it is possible. The rate of dog poisoning is a great deal higher in the Muslim areas of Krabi and we will try to negotiate with them to get the dogs out of there for them, rather than having all the dogs abused and murdered.
I do love the way that these pups get so excited when we come near and this excitement on their part was before they even knew that I had food with me. Needless to say they were even more excited once they discovered that I came with snacks as well.
When we departed we did so after talking to the people that are looking after these dogs, leaving our emergency contact information, and also leaving them a bunch of food as well as a contact where they can use our "guy" in order to obtain this food with zero markup. We can only hope that they follow these instructions and in a few months we will come and check up on the pups to see how they are doing.
While this particular group of puppies are too young to be sterilized just yet, we already spoke to the human residents of this area about how we want to come back in a few months and take all of them to the veterinarian for this surgery.
If you don't know anything about spay or neutering, it is very simple, cheap, and safe process that honestly, should be a priority with pets, stray or otherwise, all over the world. The only way to get ahead of the suffering of stray dogs and cats is the tackle the root of the problem. Feeding dogs is great, but a healthy and well-fed dog will procreate and replicate as often as possible when they feel the call of the wild. This might seem cute and there was a time when it was necessary to the survival of a pack, but in modern times it simply leads to more unnecessary suffering more often than not. The only way forward is sterilization.
I know that our organization is making an impact because these days I am alerted to the presence of new puppies on fewer and fewer instances as the years go by and while I do miss the puppies sometimes, this is just a sign that what we are doing here is actually working.
There's always more to be done though!
If you would like to see how you can help out or simply spread the word, please visit our website at
http://krabianimalwelfare.org
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