The overpopulation of stray dogs in Thailand leads to many or perhaps most of these homeless dogs having a ton of health problems. For one thing, they have to wander in order to scavenge for food and because of how crazy the streets are here, this means that they are always in danger of being struck by cars. You don't have to look very far in Thailand to discover a dog that has a horrible limp and seeing a dog dead on the side of the road is a pretty regular sight.
The food they find in the bins and what not is normally not great food either. It is often filled with parasites that once inside the dog will wreck havoc on its health and while dogs do have the ability to fight this off, it normally gets made worse because they are now weak from the illness and finding food just becomes more complicated.
The dogs that we make sure are fed at the temples that we monitor have significantly fewer health problems because of this one simple thing.
It should be pretty simple to understand. These dogs don't have to go anywhere to get fed. Therefore, they tend to just stick around the temple and maybe socialize locally, but their need to roam in order to find food has been eliminated and therefore they can spend their days just lying in the sun, interacting with the monks or temple visitors, and rest. No longer are they wandering the dangerous streets in search of something to put in their bellies.
We can't afford some sort of luxury brand dog food and mostly we just buy whatever is the cheapest. There is a local dog-food distributor that gives us the food at cost with no markup on the price and we are very grateful for this. There are some good people in the world after all.
Most of the dogs will eat this, but we try to spice it up a bit by putting other sorts of food in there with it when we have the time to interact with them. For the most part the dogs just gobble it up as soon as it is put in front of them.
This pic was not a normal day, I will admit. We went over the top for the sake of the photo because we were celebrating the recovery of one of the more popular temple dogs. Everyone got a hot dog that day and trust me, the dogs were VERY excited about that.
I get great joy out of meeting up with all the dogs that we take care of at the temples and I think they do as well. I feel like I have 100 children that are all (mostly) very happy to see me...even if it is just because I am "the guy with the food."
If you notice a dog in your part of the world that looks unhealthy, maybe do just a little something to make their life better like give them some food or even better, if you see it all the time, maybe make it a part of your day to always bring it some food. The lack of needing to run around and search for food can do wonders for a dog's health. I would say it is probably the biggest thing that can be done.
if you would like to see how you can help out or simply spread the word, please visit our website at
http://krabianimalwelfare.org
Krabi Animal Welfare is a charity run entirely by volunteers and are a registered non-profit organization in Thailand and the U.K.. We aim to relieve the pain and suffering of dogs and cats within Krabi Province.
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