Today, Karin, Soraya & I met up with the volunteer team from Nakorn Payap International School (NIS) at Wat Ban Tho, the temple project they have recently initiated.

We were there to collect a couple of TvT (Transmissible Venereal Tumor cases) and to check in with Elissa Francemone, the teacher who is driving this project. It was great to see her along with many young and interested folks, looking to improve the health of this temples dogs, giving mange treatments and vaccinations against heartworm, using Ivomectin.

In the grounds of the temple, there are a lot of dogs, some puppies living in a burrow and lots of mange, fleas and ticks.

Right across from the entrance to the temple is a local market which is busy with people, plenty of food and obviously, a large number of dogs. Lets hope NIS can help these folks around this temple appreciate the benefits of sterilisation.

Our visit was however, cut short, as we received a call from a distressed resident of Sea Games Village, saying that a dog had been poisoned and was in desperate need of assistance.

After collecting just one of the 2 TvT cases, it transpired the second dog had already died but how she died we may never know, we made our way to Sea Games Village, which is on the Canal Road, adjacent to the 700 Year Stadium.

On the way I had a chat with Om, the patient with the tumor and experienced the ride from the back seat.

She will join this week’s TvT run along with the current list of 10 others being given weekly injections of Vincristine (Chemo therapy) which is gauranteed to stop the tumor growing and help the dog make a full recovery. I will be writing about that subject a little more, with some nasty photographs very soon.

Now I appreciate what it’s like on a Monday for the poor guys sat in the back.

Apart from there being very little leg room, if you are sat with a character who wants to look out of your window, there isn’t much you can do about it but squeeze up together and share the view!

At Sea Games Village, we met up with the lady who called us, whilst desperately trying to save the dogs life. We were too late. She had done what she could, tried to pour a solution of charcoal and herbs down the dying dogs throat but unfortunately the dog could not make a recovery from the painful and wretched sequence of death that poisoning so often follows.

If we had arrived sooner, there would have been nothing more we could have done. A vet may well have been able to assist in some way but that again would have been a delay in time.

This village is a government development and after discussing the death with our colleagues at Lanna Dogs, we found that this dog and some others were recently sterilised by the government vets. This ‘murder’ is not the first to have happened in the Sea Games Village, we have been called a couple of times previously when other dogs have suffered the same fate.

What can we do? What can anyone do, if there is someone who hates dogs so much that they will lay baited food down for the dogs to eat, knowing the consequence of their actions.

All we can do is hope someone catches them doing it and is brave enough to tell people like us who it is.

But having said that… to murder a dog in Thailand is not thought to be an offence anyway.