When you live in Thailand, you become aware that life away from the city and the various tourist focused areas, can be quite basic and to people coming from a western civilisation, these places can draw comments like slum, poverty, backward and indeed 3rd world.

“Temple” & “Remote” are 2 words that constantly send a shiver through me.

When I first started volunteering with Care for Dogs, Karin showed me some examples of what these 2 words can mean. She took me to some places situated way out in the back of beyond - out in the boondocks - in the outback, where we found excessive numbers of dogs, living an existence and breeding at an uncontrolled rate. Too many dogs!

Many parts of the rural areas, not only around Chiang Mai but all over Thailand, are centred around farming communities with little more than a wooden weather beaten place to call home and not a lot of change. I don’t mean small coins, I mean, civilised development and growth of human nature and common sense.

I live within a Thai family and out of respect and with due courtesy, attend all the various family gatherings and ceremonies that happen, whether they be happy or sad in prospect from marriages to deaths, and celebrations about the various times of the year, it is always good to see the relations come from far and wide and pay their respects to the elders of our family.

Recently we (about 12 including a 91 year patriarch) visited a temple near to his home, a different temple to the ones we have previously been to. I have been visiting Granddad approximately once a month for the past 5 years. I had no idea this temple even existed, it is so hidden and remote. It is way out in the back of beyond and the earth track road leading from a tarmac road is about 2 kilometres is heavily forested. Remote!

Physical signs of development, semi constructed walls surrounding a partially erected temple building being built on top of the earlier building and Chedi within the forest represent the temple but the ‘out buildings’ contained the typical trappings of Buddhist ceremonies.

On the outside, weather beaten faded plastic chairs and of course a lot of red mud up the once white walls but inside the heavy grilled roller shutters were the bright gold and red, yellow and artistic images and furnishings.

We found the monk and went about the remembrance ceremony for many relatives that had passed away over the years and made a donation of food and money to the temple.

Outside in the mud, whilst the family chatted with the monk, I found Kh Chan, a caretaker type guy who lives at the temple. He told me about the growing number of cats and dogs and introduced me to a couple of recently pregnant dogs, both gave birth within days of each other, 17 pups in all, adding to the 9 adult / teenager residents there already. Temple!

Kh Chan explained that the younger of the Mums was in fact the daughter of the elder one. The younger one had lost all but 2 of her pups, granny lost none but had no milk to give the hungry pups. So the daughter was feeding all the remaining, much to the detriment of her nipples, now bleeding with constant tugging.

He showed me how friendly all the dogs were and when I remarked about not seeing ticks and fleas, he swiftly produced a flask of powder he lovingly sprinkled on all the dogs.

A recipe for disaster or wat?

Remote - nobody really cares a hoot and not a lot of people visit anyway, let alone those with any common sense to do something about the situation

Temple - out of site & out of mind, someone else will deal with it… won’t they? Where is the funding and the support likely to come from?

I am so torn. This temple is 45 kilometres from my home, 50 from the shelter and that is just in one direction. The nearest vet is 20 kilometres away from the temple and once anyone would start to provide food and arrange sterilisation and vaccination for these poor creatures, the support would need to be ongoing.

Since my visit last Sunday, I have thought constantly about how I could help these 2 mothers from becoming pregnant again, assist the little females from following in their Mothers repeated agony (obvious rape by attendant males) and bringing a halt to yet another disaster waiting to happen (explode!).

View location of these dogs with Google Maps here …