ABSTRACT: In June 2013. the author saw an advertisement from a dog rescue charity called Soi Dog, urgently requesting vet volunteers to help in a government- run dog shelter in Nakhom Phanom, Thailand. Three thousand dogs, crushed together in suffocatingly small cages and loaded onto lorries, had been intercepted and rescued whilst on their way to Vietnam for the dog meat trade there and were in desperate need of help.

Immediate response

I responded immediately with my vet colleague, Heather Bacon, requested annual leave, and two days later we found ourselves on a 26-hour journey to North¬East Thailand and part of an international vet team that had also responded. I was the only vet nurse out there and have experience in shelter work in Asia; but I still found nursing and vaccinating the sick and dying dogs in the shelter a very testing experience.

With 2,000 dogs living in buildings designed originally for pigs and with an actual capacity for only 400 dogs, it was understandably difficult for the two Thai government vets and handful of staff to provide good welfare standards for each individual.

Many of the dogs in the shelter were dying either from diseases, such as distemper and parvovirus, or starvation owing to overcrowding and the dogs’ inability to compete for the food offered twice daily. It was the ineffectiveness of the treatment and nursing and the cultural barrier of not being able to euthanise agonal, dying dogs that I found particularly upsetting.

Palliative care was the best that we could offer and each emaciated, suffering dog in the filled-to-capacity hospital was offered pain relief and antibiotics. With no washing facilities available, I was only able to give a small sheet of cardboard for bedding to protect their bony bodies from the wire-bottomed cages as they tried to survive.

Heart-rending daily routine

Every morning, the Thai staff would walk around the concrete pens of hundreds of dogs and pick out the sickest and weakest dogs to be brought to the hospital for treatment. Up to 20 dogs at a time would be loaded into a small trolley and brought to us for subcutaneous fluids, parasite treatment, antibiotics, wound treatment and pain relief and then returned back to the pen, or hospitalised if they were deemed too weak to cope back with the other dogs.

Since many of the dogs were even unable to stand or compete for food, we held back a large percentage of the 40 or 50 dogs that we treated every morning.

Every day, as I filled up each hospitalised dog’s water bowl and cleaned its cage in the 35°C heat and relentless humidity, I was dismayed at how little I was able to provide for the hundreds of patients with which I was faced. Filling its water bowl accounted for only five per cent of what I actually wanted to do as a vet nurse.

There was no time to bathe and lubricate dry, discharging eyes, or properly clean dogs as they lay in puddles of diarrhoea. No time to administer much needed intravenous fluids or sit and hand feed an anorexic dog, or to ‘tablet’ the dogs that had eaten around their medication – or even to stroke the ones that looked enquiringly at me, offering limp tail wags and silently hoping for a gentle hand.

There were so many dogs in the hospital and there was just not enough time to give them the basic care – I just had to move on and clean out and top up the water of the next dog.

Legacy of enlightened handling

What I do feel I achieved though – and, hopefully, it will continue now we have left – is the application of more humane handling techniques when moving and catching the shelter dogs. The staff at the shelter were not knowledgeable about dog behaviour and had an understandable fear of being bitten and contracting rabies.

Of the limited staff there, none of them was vaccinated and no one had received training on how to handle nervous or aggressive dogs. Crude handling techniques that unintentionally hurt and frightened the dogs were common practice.

It was incredibly sad to see these inherently friendly but terrified dogs, who had already endured so much, being so roughly handled – using heavy ‘neck graspers’ – by the very people who were here to help them. I was really keen to demonstrate much more humane handling techniques whilst still maintaining the safety of the staff.

By the end of my time there – and with consistent safe, but humane, handling demonstrated – the staff learned how they could be much gender and calmer with the dogs. The ‘neck graspers’ were only used for the most dangerous of dogs and even then their bodies were supported when being lifted.

Frustration and follow-up

The reality of ‘real world animal welfare’ is exhausting and depressing and I think I had a bout of compassion fatigue whilst out there. I walked away wondering what I had managed to achieve and questioning, once again, the ethics of long-term shelters for animals.

All these dogs – these beautiful, friendly, individual characters – were now facing a lifetime of captivity as anonymous souls in a dog-saturated concrete pen. And why? Sadly, all because of some peoples’ cultural dietary preferences and the illegal trade that occurs to support them.

I know I didn’t address the underlying problems to change the world in my 10 days in Thailand, but I hopefully made a few dogs’ lives a little more bearable.

Soi Dogs, the charity that, along with Worldwide Veterinary Services, funded flights and accommodation for Heather and me, has employed more local staff to help with the ever-growing influx of intercepted, smuggled dogs that arrive at the shelter. They have also funded the building of a new, improved purpose- built shelter and continually advertise – via the internet – the new dogs that desperately need homes.

Heather and I both adopted dogs whilst out there and they will be arriving in Edinburgh in the next couple of weeks, just in time for a Scottish winter! 

Author

Hayley Walters RVN

Hayley has been a veterinary nurse for 17 years. She spent 10 years in mixed animal practice before moving to China to work for Animals Asia, a charity that rescues bears from bile farms. She now works at The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies and splits her time between animal welfare work in the UK and overseas for the Jeanne Marchig International Centre for Animal Welfare Education (JMICAWE) and assisting in anaesthesia in its purpose-built small animal teaching hospital.

To cite this article use either

DOI: 10.1111/vnj.12078 or Veterinary Nursing Journal Vol 28 pp 338-340

 • VOL 28 • October 2013 • Veterinary Nursing Journal