Phuket Dog Pound

[Leone]

Dear Readers -- I respectfully ask you to please help us to protest against the daily increasingly deplorable conditions in the controversial dog pound in Phuket, Thailand. Besides local people now dumping more unwanted animals, the government catches 20 to 30 dogs daily, a campaign planned to continue until mid-August.

Thank you,

Margot Homburg Park

co-founder Soi Dog Foundation

www.soidogfoundation.org

2000 dogs on 3200 square meters of land…

Sadly, and not for lack of trying to prevent this, the Phuket dog pound has been put into operation!

Many people, locals as well as expats, are up in arms about this but catching, impounding and dumping by owners has systematically begun, with already desperate situations created for many dogs, especially the many pups who having to drink each others’ urine because they are too small for the water containers.

It has been proven that mass sterilization of owner-dogs as well as strays is the only solution to reducing the over-population of unwanted animals and then only after a minimum of 70% has been done – this has been pleaded and preached time and time again to the authorities, including personal conversations with the Governor of Phuket.

To no avail, however! Even despite a disastrous previous attempt at impounding dogs at Wat Chalong, where 60 of 100 imprisoned dogs killed each other, no lesson was learned. What will happen instead is mass-starvation from lack of food for the submissive ones and due to lack of budget beyond the first month of operation; mass-dying from diseases like parvo and distemper (no vaccinations are given), as well as maggot-infested wounds; and mass-killing from fighting.

The government accuses local animal charities of NOT helping catching dogs for this project and that is entirely correct. However, Phuket City Life Stock Office and the Governor seem to forget that volunteers worked many hours and spent lots of money for it’s sterilization clinics in Phuket City.

The facts are that no sane person would assist in creating what is without doubt going to be a total disaster. It is also clear that it will be the charities that will be left to clear up the mess.

It is hard to imagine that the government wants to inflict so much suffering and distress for these poor animals as well as the many Thai and foreign people who have help these animals survive and get sterilized. This MUST be totally against Buddhist teaching. Making Thai people work in this environment of suffering is not right either. Each high-ranking government official should be assigned to work there and experience the negative energy and bad karma this creates.

Domesticated dogs are here because we created them and now that they have become a burden, we treat them like garbage. Dogs have the same emotional and physical feelings as people do – can you imagine yourself being taken away from the place you call home, against your will and being imprisoned for the rest of your life in a much too crowded place, rife with disease! Without all these dogs eating the left-over food thrown into the garbage everywhere in the open, rats and snakes will prevail, bringing disease and more unsanitary conditions to the local people – dogs need to be part of this society, as well as cats but they must be controlled by sterilization.

History shows that these types of pounds do nothing to reduce the problem. Despite the objective to round up ALL stray dogs, this will not happen, and the remaining animals will quickly fill the void. The dumping of unwanted puppies will also continue as people find that selling puppies is not as easy as they thought.

Facts prove, that the only solution that actually works, is to sterilize all the female dogs in a particular area, both strays and owner dogs. They will continue to live out their lives protecting their territory until after a few years the problem is virtually eradicated.

It is unfortunate that the authorities do not do something more to support the charities in this effort, rather than wasting time and money on this killing field.

This action must be condemned and stopped immediately!

Please help by making your voice heard and send letters of protest to the Governor of Phuket:

Phuket Governor Udomsak Usawarankura

Provincial Hall

Amphur Muang

Phuket, Thailand 83000

Email: [email protected]

Fax: 076-216-582

[Dutchy2]

I feel sympathetic towards your mission but I fear it's not going to work at all. You're asking 'care' for other living beings from Thai people. There are 10% of Thai people living below the poverty line and the government plans to buy a foreign football team. There's no such things as 'care' for other living beings here. Don't forget that they're already feeding these dogs, they're not even feeding people who don't have enough money to buy food.

"No lesson was learned" you say, I don't agree with this one. They know exactly what will happen but they don't care. That's a major difference. You also use religion as an argument, that's also not relevant. You can see Thaksin paying respect at Budhhist shrines, the idea is to make other people believe that you're a good Budhhist and good human being. In the meantime you do what you want to do, prefably everything that goes against Budhhism but which will personally benefit you. Religion is totally irrelevant and these dogs have got nothing to do with Buddhism. They need to be fed and taken care off, that costs money and the

Thais are not going to take care of that aspect of the story. Foreign NGOs will do that, but they will be cursed at for interfering in Thai affairs.

It's the people that causes the main problem here in my opinion, in any decent country this would not happen.

Dutchy

[Leone]

Touche Duchy,

Your posting was well-written and concise and your last paragraph sums it up.

However, awareness is important and if you love animals it is important to create that however futiile it may seem.

Leone