Otto Berchem – ARTAID – More to Love
Today Care for Dogs were very pleased to meet up with Artist Otto Berchem who is participating in the Travelling Art Exhibition – ARTAIDS, a group collectively raising awareness and fighting the stigma surrounding HIV in Chiang Mai.
The flyer (captured above) shows a map of various exhibition venues within Chiang Mai during 28 November through to 19 December at Chiang Mai University Art Center, DinDee Tea House, PlusEqual at Art Museum Shop, all commencing with a “Grand Opening” at 18:00 on 28th at CMU Art Center.
Otto is a dog lover and during his stay in Bangkok, started to distribute dog collars he had specially made, with a personal logo he has designed “You am I am you” in white print on a bright red stylish collar. Today he continued to distribute his gift to the dogs and managed to take in a few belly rubs at the same time – him giving the the dogs, not dogs giving him!
Karin and a few of the team from Care for Dogs liaised with Kh Padee, who is a wonderful Thai lady who makes a tremendous difference to dogs lives in & around Chiang Mai which this morning became only too evident.
We met up at Wat Phra Sing, in Chiang Mai and before Kh Pardee arrived, we tried desperately to approach dogs, armed with beautiful red collars and a few vaccination needles behind our backs but apart from the slow, fat and well socialised old dogs, the majority just took one look at the fashion statement & kept their distance.
Khun Padee arrived and all that changed. The dogs were all around her, putting their paws up to greet her, rolling over to have their tummies rubbed and best of all allowing the collars to be fitted.
From the images below I hope you can agree, the typical Thai dog dressed smartly with a red collar makes them stand out in a crowd. How lovely they look.
Only last week we were warned by people at Rama IX park, that the local authorities were very keen to reduce the numbers of homeless dogs and were “rounding up” any dogs that did not appear to be cared for and taking them to a place far away from the city, in what the people in Rama IX said was a ‘clean up’. They asked for some collars for the dogs there, so as to give the impression the dogs were indeed being cared for.
Even better reason therefore to assist Otto Berchem with his project to distribute the collars to as many homeless dogs on the streets and in temples in Chiang Mai.
Let us all hope the good work being done by these artists to improve the public perception of people diagnosed with AIDS is a success.
Category: Education, Wat phra sing
Tagged as: AIDS, art, artaids, collars, HIV, kh pardee, otto berchem, vaccination
This was in deed a “feel good” morning – go and visit Wat Phra Sing and Wat Muen Laan and see how trendy the dogs look like! At the same time we could also up-date their vaccinations to protect the dogs against terrible diseases such as distemper or parvo virus. Otto Berchem sees similiarities between people with Aids being treated as “outcasts” and dumped and abandoned street and temple dogs and this inspired his project. Hope with their new collar the dogs will be safer from dog catchers by looking more like owned dogs. At the same time the project might also help to raise their profile as “second class dogs” compared with pedigree dogs.
Beautiful story. Thank you Otto!
for dog collars, i think the best one are those leather dog collars;.~