How well do pets adjust to life in Thailand

[zd1]

We are going to be moving to Thailand in the next 2 months and will be bringing our dog and cat our dog is a 10 year old Patterdale terrier and our cat is 2 years old.

We had thought about getting the cat rehomed near where we currently live but every time we think about this we get emotional (i'm as bad as the Mrs) and we just couldn't leave him.

He has been with us since he was about 4 weeks old I found him in the garden and took him into the house, we took him to the vet who said that he was probably abandoned by his mother so as she could have another litter before winter set in. Our dog goes everywhere with us, he started turning up at our house not long after we moved in, he was from a farm about a mile away and we kept taking him back there but one day the farmer asked us if we wanted him so we had him.

We are wondering about other peoples experience of their pets adjusting to Thailand we are a bit worried about snakes and other predators.

[Oxx]

First consideration should be whether you are likely to return to your home country and have to leave the pets behind in Thailand.  That wouldn't be nice.  There was a recent topic here about someone with the dilemma of getting their pet put down, or left abandoned at a rubbish tip because they were leaving Thailand.

 

Snakes are a real issue.  At my upmarket, quite small, moobaan in the suburbs of Bangkok the security guards deal with at least one snake a day.  Last week my eldest dog cornered a fairly large snake (just under 2 metres) in the garden.  A couple of days before there'd been a (non-venomous) rat snake in the garden.  The week before I was walking the smallest dog, only to look down and see she was standing astride a baby cobra.  The month before I found a Malayan Krait (lethally poisonous, but in this case dead) whilst walking the dogs in the moobaan.  And not long before that a neighbour's Siberian husky had a close encounter with a 2 1/2 meter python.  It bit him on the nose and the scars are still there, but he lived to tell the tale.

 

That said, I've not heard of any dog dying in the moobaan since I've been here (7 years or so).  One just needs to be very vigilant whilst walking the dogs.  (There have been quite a few too close encounters of the serpentine kind.)

 

Sorry, can't comment on dogs' adjusting.  All my dogs are Thai street rescue dogs.

 

 

[isanbirder]

It also depends where you are going to be living.  By contrast with Oxx, I live in a village in Buriram (lower NE), walk, with dog(s) through the rice paddies for a couple of hours daily, and though I see snakes often, I have never had any problem with them.  Most are harmless.

 

A much bigger problem is ticks, which can carry lethal diseases.  This forum is full of threads on how to get rid of them, and there is no guaranteed method.

[dick dasterdly]

Agree entirely with isanbirder that ticks are likely to be your dog's main initial problem as dogs' brought from abroad have zero tolerance to the tick-borne blood parasites - and this can result in death unless you get vet treatment very quickly at the first sign of something not being 'quite right'.

 

After 10 years here, I still worry about snakes when the dogs are running about - but more relevant to dogs brought from a country where they will never have had experience of snakes, is that they may consider all  snakes as prey....

 

Personally, I would suggest adopting a soi dog, as they will teach your foreign dog which snakes need to be given a large berth!

 

Sorry, I've no idea about bringing a cat to Thailand, but expect the problems will be similar.

[zd1]

Thank you for your replies.

We have no intention of returning to my home country once we move to Thailand apart from maybe an annual holiday, we will still have investments so may need to check up on things periodically.

When we arrive we will stay at my Mrs house in the suburbs of Bangkok, her parents live in the house but we will only be there for a week or so then we will be looking at moving to Koh Chang where we intend to stay permanently.

When we first had our dog from the farmer he was covered in ticks all around his ears and chest and he had obviously been mistreated as he was very skittish around us at first. We sorted the ticks out by removing them from him by twisting them out and also treated him with frontline for them, I think the frontline didn't agree with him but it did help in getting rid of the ticks. He is now free from ticks but as we live in a rural area he does pick them up from time to time, my Mrs combs both the dog and cat a couple of times a day to deflea them and also check for ticks.

I like the idea of adopting a soi dog to show my dog the ropes he is quite a sociable little fella with other dogs and with humans, the cat on the other hand is scared of everything apart from the Mrs, myself and a few friends who visit, but given time he does get used to dogs and people. We looked after our friends akita for a couple of weeks in May and within a couple of days the cat was bossing the situation.

[meatboy]

good luck to you and i salute you bringing your pets with you.if you read this forum you will see i post quite regular regarding our boy.

there has been much heartache regarding ticks,he has had his fair shair of snake encounters but luckily no piosoness ones.

i live on a mooban so we are lucky no outside dogs come in.strays carry what nows what,and that can be a problem.