My Luck With The Dogs Finally Ran Out Today
A left handed newsletter
After a year of no major injuries today I got a pretty severe bite. I was out trying to catch dogs to sterilise and just took one too many risks. It was a big nervous boy (the white one here) who we had sedated and who I thought was asleep. I snuck up behind him and tried to grab him. He wasn’t fully asleep and predictably panicked and saw me as a sudden danger. Fair enough given what these dogs go through on a daily basis.
He got a good grip on the arm and I went down as If I’d been shot, screaming like a baby. It was over before it started but he got a good chunk as a souvenir.
An Emergency Hospital Visit
The wound was serious enough that I had to go straight to hospital. They were able to treat it and patch me up in a couple of hours. They did the following…
Injected antibiotics
Injected anti rabies serum
Cleaned it
Stitched it up
Gave me a tetanus injection
Taking Calculated Risks
The reason I got the bite was because this week I discovered about 15 dogs right beside a main road that were in severe danger. They needed to be caught and moved or face dying one by one. You can read about them here or here.
The thing to remember is…
These dogs don’t want to be caught
They are wild street dogs not pets
You have to trick them into a box with food or other tricks
Sedation is hard as one dog could eat it twice or wander back onto the road
There is danger of a traffic accident involving humans.
Traps and other equipment is hard to get up the hill and wouldn’t work
An Emergency Plan In Action
The issue with these dogs is that it isn’t just a money problem. More than anything it is a logistical problem. To treat them all would be about $1000 but the main challenge was the logistical plan being put in place including…
Rounding up people to catch and drive (days off work for people etc)
Freeing up space to store caught dogs
Having spots for 6 dogs to get sterilised when we caught them
Moving the dogs to safer places away from the road (homes are next to impossible)
Buying vaccines and medicines to treat the dogs this morning
The biggest thing I wish we had was a button that you could push to help catch and bring in the dogs to all get treated.
What I Learnt Today
I’m big on always being positive and taking lessons from everything.
Don’t try to pick up the biggest dog from behind. I was under pressure because we hadn’t caught a dog in 3 hours and time was running out. I took a risk of grabbing the biggest guy without seeing if he was fully sedated. He very much still alert.
You can have a “Bad” day and still be winning. I got a bite that took me out of action but 6 dogs were still sterilised and vaccinated today and some moved from the road. Thats literally dozens of lives saved. This boy won’t be making any babies when he wakes up.
People are awesome. So many local people quickly offered to do my dog feeding, drive me or come to the hospital etc. These are people who would never have fed a dog in their lives or even know where to start
I want to help dogs more than ever. If some creature 3 times your size grabbed you by the back of the neck while asleep I dare say you’d react similar to the dog that bit me. I love days like this as it makes me realise just how big and hard the challenge is but also how much these dogs lives are in danger.
I’m probably annoyingly and stupidly optimistic in life. I was sitting there in hospital for a couple of hours and thinking how happy I was in life. How clearly I could see the scale of the problems in front of me to fix with the dogs. How I need to push on bigger and faster. I had a real moment of clarity in terms of the mission and my life.
It was after all the very same emergency room where I’d nearly died 2 years ago from alcohol abuse. Now here I was itching for the doctor to sew me up so as I could get back to fixing what matters to me most…Street dogs.
As for the guy who bit me. I’ve forgiven him and will call past with a few sausages tomorrow and make up with him. He was just scared.
Hope you have a lovely weekend.
Big Love
Niall
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Oh no. I’m so sorry. Dog bites are so painful.
I have an idea for you. Maybe I’m crazy but I think this could catch on with most people in most countries. Most people don’t want to see animals suffer. Maybe you can change the attitude and make them proud like I’ll show below.
I lived in a town in Chile that is a vacation spot for people from Santiago. Those people would dump their dogs there every year. Mostly purebreds which shocked me. There are almost no shelters in Chile. So every house has a stray dog in front of it.
The town (15,000 people) decided to spay/neuter them and vaccinate them at the cost of the town. It’s made all the difference. Every person in the town is invested in this. They make a point of telling you how proud they are that the dogs are safe and not full of disease like other towns. Probably bc dog bites are free in Chilean hospitals. Which tells you something.
Where I lived they had two of their own German Shepards that lived inside the gates and they also fed the Beagle and Chihuahua that lived outside them.
Same thing when I was in college in Hawaiii. So many feral cats. Eventually started spaying/neutering etc. The colonies are still there but not growing.
I feel that people in Thailand and around the world would do this too. Everyone wants to find a solution. I’m sure they be as proud of their city as they were in Chile. When I was a kid in the US we had an awful gang of dogs that ran around unchecked and killed all my ducks and so many other things. My cats had so many kittens too. We didn’t know better. Now we do. If I see a free dog now I freak and try to catch it.
Oh bugger! Your optimism brought tears to my eyes. As you say - lesson learnt. Take care of that arm to ensure you can feed another day xxx