As part of their Thailand fundraising programme, WSPA have introduced a Face to Face campaign in Bangkok and as part of their background work to build their teams experince & knowledge, today WSPA are visiting Care for Dogs.

It was a pleasure to discuss some of the case histories or certain residents at the shelter and introduce some of the characters (dogs to people & people to dogs!!).

Here are a few snaps of the visit.

They asked many questions and shared stories as I talked about all the important chores that needed to be done to take care of the 150+ dogs and puppies at the shelter. We discussed the importance of sterilization and proper care of pets. The children already knew a lot about what dogs need, especially attention, playtime and love.

We ended the hour with a very important subject – safety. Children are sometimes victims of dog bites, often by dogs they know. Most of the time this happens when they are not being supervised by adults and they mistakenly chase a shy dog, corner a scared dog, approach an unfriendly dog or cuddle a dog that doesn’t want to be cuddled.

We talked about which dogs to approach and how to approach them. The only dogs that are safe to approach are dogs with their owners, only after asking permission first. All the children took turns meeting Judy properly, approaching slowly, asking permission, then extending a hand for Judy to smell.

Thank you to the children at Prem for their generous donations of blankets, towels and toys. We’re happy to see community service start at such a young impressionable age.

We at Care for Dogs welcome every opportunity to help anyone, children and adults, to better understand dogs so we can safely and humanely live together.

If your class or group would like us to visit and do a short lesson on care or safety, just contact us to make an appointment.

These folks have a project called Truth & Service which they hope to generate assistance for various needy areas in local society.

Keen, bright & happy people refreshed the atmosphere at the shelter during their stay.

We began with a short lesson on pet overpopulation and the importance of sterilization. In this lesson, the students found out that just ONE unspayed (unsterilized) female dog can be responsible for over 90,000 offspring in the course of only 6 years! We discussed some misconceptions of sterilization and they learned that it is a quick and painless operation that could single-handedly solve the overpopulation dilemma. We all agreed that sterilizing one dog today is definitely preferable to caring for/dealing with 90,000 of her offspring later.

At the shelter, the children met dogs who had been abandoned, abused, neglected, injured or sick – many as a result of overpopulation. The groups of children and their chaperones spent the afternoon working as volunteers – bathing dogs with special skin conditions (such as mange), walking dogs that needed exercise, socializing dogs and puppies in order to prepare them for adoptive families and learning the ins and outs of everyday shelter life. Although there were some kids worried about the cleanliness of their designer sneakers, most of them dug themselves right into the work and got good and dirty.

We at Care for Dogs feel that the way to end the suffering of homeless dogs (and many owner dogs) is through education. We would like to thank Ms. Kristina Solheim and the young people from International School Eastern Seaboard in Pattaya for their interest, hard work and donations. We hope that they will pass on what they’ve learned from their visit so that in time the world may be a kinder place for all animals.

The programs were recorded for Children’s television and will be shown on ThaiPBS channel this next Saturday 26 September 2009 and a week later, Saturday 3 October 2009 at 07:30 in the morning.

If you have UBC in Thailand you can find this channel on preset channel 6, it is also on terrestrial tv via a coat hangar out the back of the set and for those reading this on the internet you can simply, follow this link which enables you to watch Live Thai TV on your computer.

In case you have difficulty viewing that link outside of Thailand, here are a couple more !

http://365boxs.com/tvonline_titv.html
and http://watch.squidtv.net/asia/thailand.html

So, fearing the obvious accusations of repeating ;

Don’t miss the show !

by Maggi Albiez:

I was asked by a friend of mine, Khun Sitang Jenwinitthai, Assistant professor and dean of the Communication Design Department, to give a presentation for her students. I was to choose between three topics: presenting my country, Switzerland, presenting the animal care non profit project, which I accomplished from 2002 to 2005 on Koh Payam or to present the Care for Dogs Foundation in Chiang Mai. I chose Care for Dogs, because I live in Chiang Mai for eight months now and am an active volunteer in this organization.

AApprox. 30 students were present and very interested in this topic. A lively discussion arose when I showed the PowerPoint presentation and the web page of Care for the Dogs.

On Wednesday, 2 September, the whole group will visit the shelter in Hang Dong.

Parallel to it the students will sketch road signs and stickers for Care for Dogs in a group work.

7 students are interested in being a part of our team at the Sunday Market and after their visit in the shelter they will know what it is all about.

I am so much pleased that I had this fantastic opportunity to pass on so much information for the improvement of the situation of the dogs of Chiang Mai and the surrounding areas.

In addition to some recent Thai television interest shown in our activity , 3 additional & entirely separate offers have come forward to involve Care for Dogs Foundation in television & video productions.

A Chiang Mai based consortium of program makers for television, want to shoot a 13 episode series with much of the material involving Care for Dogs and this will include Soraya as the key figure at the centre.

In this program called “Pouen Rak Sat”, which roughly translates to be ‘Friends love Animals’, Dog Woman becomes Anchor Man and Soraya has already worked on the first footage on location, rescuing several puppies from joining the ranks of ‘more homeless dogs’ eeking out an existence on the streets of Chiang Mai.

You can be sure to see updates here about the developments and scheduling.

Stay tuned !

When the street urchins hear of this this , the rat population thru out the city will come under attack. Just hope this is not another program where the rat catchers are screwed by middlemen, etc. Now that someone has started something that will help Chiang Mai’s image, hope we can get them (who ever them are) to include soi dogs in the program, the city would become a much more hygienic place.

With attitudes like this by visitors to this wonderful country (as that’ what all foreigners are), what hope do we have for improving Thai peoples attitudes towards dogs and for that matter wildlife.

Ms. Kat’s K-3 class was finishing up their school year and a unit on “Caring” so she contacted Care for Dogs and asked if we could come speak to the little ones about what we do. The children were on their best behavior and listened intently as I spoke about the many people who “work” at the shelter not for money but for the love and well-being of dogs. It was at this time that they learned the word “volunteer” and many of them seemed really interested in signing up. They were only 5 and 6 so we’ll have to wait a few years.

All the children were excited to meet Judy and touch her. So I though what a perfect time to squeeze in a little lesson about safety. We often hear about children getting bitten by dogs, and many dogs get dumped as a consequence. Those who know dogs, know that they only bite when threatened or provoked. And children are often the unwitting instigators in these situations.

I took this opportunity to teach Ms. Kat’s class the proper and safe way to approach any dog. Judy, my trusty assistant, was calm and patient as the children came up one by one, asked if they may pet my dog and extended his/her hand appropriately for her to smell. Only then were they allowed to pet her.

The Kindergarten students at Prem held a bake sale and raised 1,250 baht for Care for Dogs. Thank you, little ones.

Care for Dogs is always happy to visit classrooms. Together, we can help create a humane, sustainable and peaceful world.

The young people from Global Pact came through and did just that. While other groups in their organization focused their energies on other social issues, this group of 3 Thai and 3 American university students chose to help deal with the homeless dog problem.

After some discussion about where homeless dogs come from and the problem of over-population, we came to a consensus that we needed to nip the problem where it starts – with dog owners. So, we all decided the best way to do this was to hold a village workshop for dog owners. Educating the owners about basic and preventative care and dispelling the myths behind sterilization would insure that dogs with homes would not be abandoned, would not spread disease or mate with homeless dogs and create litters of unwanted puppies.

The young people set off to a local dog-loving temple to organize the village workshop.

The abbot got the word out and on Saturday morning, a group of Care for Dogs volunteers, along with the team from Global Impact and Dr. Tarn, met with about 15 locals an Wat Roi Jan, to discuss preventative health care, sterilizations and many other concerns that came up.

Topics included:
Sterilization: the benefits, what happens during a sterilization, the risks of birth control injections, necessary after-care, the cost and how to set up an appointment with Dr. Tarn along with the use of a 50%/50% voucher scheme.

The terrible and treatable disease of TvT and the local success stories such as Dao, a current temple resident and familiar face to all.

Basic and preventative medical care: vaccinations, tick and flea treatment (to prevent blood parasites), skin problems such as mange an allergies, deworming and heartworm prevention.

After a very informative presentation and a lively question and answer session, and especially after the very graphic visual aids provided by Dr, Tarn, many of the dog-loving villagers were motivated to take Care for Dogs’ offer of vaccinations, deworming tablets, and flea and tick treatment at cost. And appointments were planned for 5 sterilizations soon.

All in all, it was a very successful Saturday morning.

Thank you Global Pact and Dr. Tarn for sharing the knowledge and making a dog’s world a little better. We hope to be able to continue these village workshops in the future.