Inside The Dog Condo: Bangkok's Abandoned Animals Face Nightmare Conditions At Wat Suan Kaew

[webfact]

Inside the Dog Condo: Bangkok's abandoned animals face nightmare conditions at Wat Suan Kaew

By Nicholas Altstadt

PAWS director Amy Baron. Photo: PAWS

BANGKOK: -- Imagine a one-acre mud pit filled with feces and urine, walled-in by a haphazard two-story tenement stifled not only by a tropical sun, but by the stench and body heat of over 1,000 dogs, 300 cats, a handful of rabbits and a couple of pigs.

Imagine living there and spending your days covered in filth, sweating your way through the never-ending task of simply trying to keep footpaths clear of excrement, removing dead animals and fending off the inevitable dog attack. And imagine at least once a week, stepping outside the walls to see yet another expecting bitch abandoned at the gate.

This is not a horrible nightmare for two middle-aged women, Sunnee ‘Lek’ Sukkaew and Pataew ‘Taew’ Wanitsuto, who have spent the past years earning less than THB200 a day struggling to keep the chaos at Dog Condo to a minimum—this is their reality.

And it was worse during the floods of 2011 [more...]

Full story: http://www.coconutsb...-wat-suan-kaew/

-- COCONUTS Bangkok 2013-01-09

[BDG]

OMG I want to help them

[PAWS Bangkok]

Several of the animals mentioned in the article are now available for adoption at PAWS Bangkok. We have the lovely Mantana, a purebred persian, nearly ripped to shreds by a dog but now fully healed, healthy, and ready for a forever home. We have kittens Calvin and Tuxedo plus 5 young, beautiful rabbits.

You can check them out and follow our work at the Dog Condo on Facebook by searching for "PAWS Bangkok".

Amy Baron

Founder, PAWS

[OxfordWill]

This is all because SCAD lacked funding and had to close, right?

[webfact]

moved to Thailand news

[seminomadic]

Thanks to Admin for this post & thanks to PAWS for getting on Thaivisa and giving us an update. More if you can, please.

[ratcatcher]

As a dog owner, I feel so sorry for these ladies carrying out this Augean task and the dilemma facing the Thai authorities and animal lovers.

Here we have thousands of abandoned cats and dogs all without a loving caring home. But for the charitable labors of these Herculean ladies, what would happen to this enormous tribe of animals?

Barbecued rack of dog in Hanoi, puppy soup with noodles in Saigon?

Surely it must be necessary to cull (kill) some of the less healthy animals in order to give the healthy ones a chance?

It is rather sad when one reads daily of the massive amounts of money wasted on foolish government and military projects that pay no real dividends and here we have a situation that could be partly solved with a donation by MPs and senators of just one day's pay a month.

I am in no position to help these people but I only wish that characters like young Krating Daeng had to spend their punishment time (if ever decided) helping this problem.

[Penangfreak]

How very, very sad....I see so much animal abuse here in Thailand. What a shame.....PF.

[zakk9]

I'm not sure why they're doing this. There are tens of thousands or more stray dogs all over Thailand. A thousand more or less can't make much of a difference. Many animals in Thailand, including those we eat for dinner, are far worse off than these dogs, nobody seem to give a dam_n about that.

[somchaismith]

Feel sorry for the cats and dogs. It's a pity that the many donation and charity scams in Thailand ruin things for the possible needy causes.

'Once bitten, twice shy.'

[01322521959]

Be cruel to be kind, is what I think. Put the poor animals down.They serve no use to either man nor beast. Why oh why can't there be a gradual change in the attitudes towards animals here? From the soi dogs to owned dogs, they just don't get looked after as they should. I only have admiration for what they are trying to do here, but to what end? The end result will b a load of animals, flee bitten and wandering round in some area of Bangkok.

[GentlemanJim]

I can not imagine the noise that must come out of that place at night.

It is little more than torture for the animals. Their existence is dreadful, flea infested and full of parasites. Help them on to the next life. They are going to be in there until they die, why prolong it, let them go peacefully. The worst thing is that many of these animals are not your hardened soi dogs, they used to belong to what they thought were loving families! Sad what we do to Man's best friend!

[noitom]

This is sad in more ways than one. Astonishing how infrequently or more appropriately "never" do we ever read about Thai giving by the Thai rich and elite, the "corporate families." of Thailand. The Red Bulls, the CPs, the PTTs, the Siam Cements, The Singhas, The Changs, Bangkok Bank, Kasinkorn, the other banks, and the hundreds of the Thai corporate families. They never make the news for running a charity or giving large contributions to worthy causes.

These folks appear constantly in Thailandtatler.com and in the Hi-So rags flashing around their 1/2 million dollar cars and lavish opulent homes, but rarely if ever do we hear about them "giving" to any causes such as this despicable "staging area" for dogs destined for kitchen tables. Come to think of it the Thai elite never show up on any searches for charitable giving, and it is always everyday Thai folks and foreigners earning 200 baht per day who appear to be doing all the heavy lifting on charitable work in Thailand. Shame on the Thai wealthy class.

[somchaismith]

^So true. That's why these guys stay so rich.

[PAWS Bangkok]

It is often suggested that mass euthanasia (or worse, the dog meat trade) be used to control the stray animal population in this country. The problem with that - other than the basic immorality of it - is that mass euthanasia as a means of population control does not work.

Scientific study after study after study in locations all around the world prove this. Anecdotally, American animal shelters kill upwards of 4 million healthy animals each and every year; if killing these animals solved the stray problem, would not the kill numbers decrease each year?

At PAWS, we are focusing on methods scientifically proven to reduce and make healthier the street animal population:

- Mass sterilization projects

- Shelter improvement and promotion of proper shelter medicine

- Education of the general populace in animal care and pregnancy prevention

None of these tasks are easy or cheap. We spend a great deal of time running in place. More often than not it is incredibly frustrating. And we don't always see the results of our work. But the results are there, and in the past 10 years, organizations such as Soi Dog Foundation, SCAD, and many private groups and individuals have made an impact.

Organizations such as ourselves do this work because its the right thing for us to do. PAWS and the excellent Soi Dog Foundation focus on sterilization because sterilization of street animals helps everyone, humans and animals. PAWS is working at Wat Suan Kaew because a situation where animals are unwittingly tortured serves no benefit to humans or animals. Soi Dog Foundation's valiant efforts against the Dog Meat Trade are made because a situation where animals are intentionally tortured causes harm to both humans and animals.

Every animal welfare activist in Thailand chooses to help animals as their way of helping people; we are inextricably linked. Everyone and everything counts, or no one and nothing does.

Amy

Founder, PAWS

[belg]

the only humane thing to do is to put them all to sleep.... try to convince your thai neighboor to neuter their cat or dog, let stand, that they pick up the SHIT their beloved animal leaves on the pavement and on the grassy plains where the children are playing

[TackyToo]

Isn't there something more important to spent a lot of money on in this country???

[khunken]

It is often suggested that mass euthanasia (or worse, the dog meat trade) be used to control the stray animal population in this country. The problem with that - other than the basic immorality of it - is that mass euthanasia as a means of population control does not work.

Scientific study after study after study in locations all around the world prove this. Anecdotally, American animal shelters kill upwards of 4 million healthy animals each and every year; if killing these animals solved the stray problem, would not the kill numbers decrease each year?

At PAWS, we are focusing on methods scientifically proven to reduce and make healthier the street animal population:

- Mass sterilization projects

- Shelter improvement and promotion of proper shelter medicine

- Education of the general populace in animal care and pregnancy prevention

None of these tasks are easy or cheap. We spend a great deal of time running in place. More often than not it is incredibly frustrating. And we don't always see the results of our work. But the results are there, and in the past 10 years, organizations such as Soi Dog Foundation, SCAD, and many private groups and individuals have made an impact.

Organizations such as ourselves do this work because its the right thing for us to do. PAWS and the excellent Soi Dog Foundation focus on sterilization because sterilization of street animals helps everyone, humans and animals. PAWS is working at Wat Suan Kaew because a situation where animals are unwittingly tortured serves no benefit to humans or animals. Soi Dog Foundation's valiant efforts against the Dog Meat Trade are made because a situation where animals are intentionally tortured causes harm to both humans and animals.

Every animal welfare activist in Thailand chooses to help animals as their way of helping people; we are inextricably linked. Everyone and everything counts, or no one and nothing does.

Amy

Founder, PAWS

I think you are doing excellent work & applaud you for it. But, if there are too many dogs to take care of, surely partial euthanasia is the only way to allow the healthy dogs to survive. I agree that mass euthanasia is not a solution to the problem but euthanasia could be kinder to some of the dogs than living in conditions mentioned in the Op.

[khaowong1]

Great job Amy... I applaud you and wish you success. People who abuse animals is a real sore point for me. I'm afraid I don't act very monkly when I get in someones face for abusing animals. so be it..

[rbrooks]

Great job on helping man's friend! Great article too on the fact that the HiSo folks in the LOS rarely giving to charities but are always present for a photo op showing their glitter.