Dennis and the concerned donkey

Mama died yesterday.

Feeling defeated and discouraged with the dog situation, I went down and helped with the large animals today. Melanie was bottle feeding the calves and she noticed one of them wasn't taking the bottle - something that is very unusual as the calves a normally fighting for a lick at it. His name was Dennis. I could recognize him easily because his spine curved in all sorts of directions. I had a look at him, he seemed bright and alert but possibly dehydrated. When the vet assistant (whose name I can now correctly pronounce: Mangi Lal) arrived we told him Dennis was refusing to eat and he looked at him for a second and then went on to the other treatments.

I helped him with a cow that had a large wound on it's face.  Then I saw a new animal in the paddock: a cow with a fracture in it's left front limb.  The animal hobbled around three-legged, something that is easy for a dog to do but much more difficult for a beastly cow. The animal was new and clearly afraid of humans.  Mangi Lal and one other man chased the animal around for quite a while before casting it and wrestling it to the ground.  When the animal was finally in lateral recumbency, I was able to feel the fractured metacarpal bone.  We gave it some Meloxicam, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory, while the assistant called down for some help and the men began to make splints out of wood using curved machetes. I held the leg straight while they wrapped the leg in cotton, placed the splints, and wrapped it in gauze.

Melanie and I talked to the doctor during tea time about Dennis and she said she would have a look at him.  After examining him she concluded that he was, in fact, dehydrated and that we should give him some I.V. fluids.  She asked me to sit with him while we gave it 2 liters. I knew this was going to take a while.  We got the calf to lay down and the doctor inserted the needle into the animal's jugular vein and attached the line for the drip. I sat the with the vet assistant for almost an hour, holding the needle place and the animal's head down.  During that time, one of the donkeys came over to the calf and stood there staring at him for an exceptionally long period of time. It was incredible as she appeared to be very concerned for the small animal.  I tried to make conversation with the assistant, but again it was mostly a communication fail.  He did tell me he liked my hair.  I had put it up in a messy bun the night before, slept on it, and left it.  I'm pretty sure it looked more like a rat's nest than a hairstyle.

Is it worth it?

My tenth day at Animal Aid wasn't easy.

For whatever reason, questions filled my mind as I rode in the rickshaw to the hospital this morning. I wondered: am I really helping Animal Aid?  Is Animal Aid really helping the animals? Is the situation too dire, the animals too many, and the resources too minimal? Are we doing more harm than good? 

Interestingly, Melanie, the other volunteer, was having similar doubts. She has no clinical experience, simply a love for animals and she was expecting to volunteer at the hospital for a month, like me. She expressed to me that she might not be able to continue coming for the full time. She has rashes from the animals and doesn't feel like she is really needed.  

I helped in "A" kennel again with feeding and treatments.  After all wounds were dressed, the doctor and assistant went into surgery to neuter three dogs, and Melanie and I talked with Erika.  Melanie expressed her concerns and Erika explained to her that the animals greatly benefit from any sort of positive human interaction.  They crave love and attention and the staff can't give them all that they need. I think it made Melanie feel somewhat better.

I went down to the paralyzed ward and sat with a few of the dogs there, still struggling with how I felt about the situation.  I looked at the dogs, some seemed healthy and happy while others looked riddled with mange and uncomfortable.  It is hard for me, having only been there ten days, to know if an animal is declining or if it is simply status quo. Compared to the dogs at home,  most of them look like shit.  Erika came and joined me and brought my attention to Mama, a paralyzed, skinny, lethargic animal. She spoke in Hindi to the woman who looks after these animals.  Apparently, Mama hasn't been eating.  Here eyes looked dull and she had very little energy, her back legs trembling.  Erika asked me what I thought was wrong. I thought to myself, "God, what ISN'T wrong with this animal."  I told her she looked painful, but it could be her abdomen, her legs, her back, who knows.  There are zero diagnostic tools here.  No x-ray, no ultrasound, no lab.  Diagnosing these animals is a shot in the dark and based somewhat on limited medical history but mostly on intuition. This animal was in really rough shape. I told Erika I wanted to give her pain meds; we needed to give her something.  We got the appropriate dose and I tried to push the pill down her throat, nearly losing a finger in the process.  Claire was there at this point and she decided we should try some fluid therapy.  She didn't think Mama had much of a chance. we rigged the fluids up, the liter hanging from a wire at the top of the tent.  With the animal laying in the sand and dirt I placed the catheter in her front leg, aiming for where the vein should be.  She was thin and dehydrated and her veins were terrible.  I saw the flash of blood and new I was in. Phew.  And there Claire and I sat, for nearly an hour, holding the animal in place and swatting flies away from her body.  It was late in the afternoon at this point and Sabin, our rickshaw driver had arrived.  I had to leave. 

On the way home I tried to sort out my feelings.  Part of me felt as though Mama's condition was so poor it should have been noticed much earlier. With 150 dogs, are they spreading themselves too thin? Part of me felt like we should have euthanized her.  I felt frustrated with myself for not knowing what to do to help her. 

When I got home I checked out Animal Aid on Facebook. The before and after photos somewhat validated for me that what are doing is good.  Even if not all of the animals survive, it is worth it for the ones that do.  For the ones that don't, at least they have had a chance that they otherwise wouldn't have had. 

Check it out -  That's me with Tarzan and Octopus.  
Www.Facebook.com/animalaidunlimited 

Sinking Boat

Today was my day off and I started the morning by visiting one of the local Ashrams to check out the yoga scene.  As most of you know, yoga is one of my absolute favorite things to do back home and I have been itching to see what the "real" yoga is like here in India. After finally finding the place I made my way up the spiraling staircase to the tiny room where a man and two students were already practicing. I was a few minutes late but he kindly let me join in.  Some of the poses he led us through were familiar, others I had never seen. At one point he put us in boat pose, arms and legs out in what is supposed to look like a boat.  He laughed and said we looked like sinking boats. Great. He had us hold some of the poses for an excruciatingly long time. I will definitely be sore tomorrow! At the end of the practice he led us through a variety of breathing sequences, starting with "fire breathing." He showed us what we were supposed to do. He looked like he was having some sort of seizure as he convulsed in different directions while breathing through his nose. I copied him as best as possible without passing out.  The practice ended with the familiar relaxation pose of shivasana. After class I asked him how much he charged and straight faced he told me 500 rupees. I was pretty sure he was kidding but went to grab my wallet anyways.  He then laughed and told me it was up to me what I give and that the profits go to a local NGO: Animal Aid. Word.

As I walked back towards the hotel I decided to keep walking.  It was just after 9 am and the city was just starting to wake up.  It was nice to walk down the streets without being hassled by pushy store owners.  I realized that I'm beginning to feel comfortable and really appreciate Udaipur for all it has to offer.  It is really a beautiful city. 

Re-release, the distemper bob, and the woman from Ahmedabad

I arrived to the hospital at the regular time, 8:30 am.  I met up with the vet assistant in A ward and I helped him assess each dog.  He marked down the ones that were healthy enough for re-release today. These dogs were going to be brought back to the area where they were picked up, the person who made the initial call about each dog would be contacted, and follow-up calls would be made a week later to check on how the animal was doing. When I saw the dogs being put into cages in the ambulance, I wondered: how would they manage to survive on the street when they had  known the comfort of the shelter, in some cases, for several months? Would they know how to find food on their own? Would they be too trusting of people? I reminded myself that animal aid has been operating  like this for years, and the system works. These animals had been given a second chance at life; they were strong and healthy now, and releasing them freed up space to take in new ill and injured dogs. As the ambulance drove away I realized how important it is for me to try to not get too attached to these animals.  Easier said than done I think.

All around the hospital there are young dogs who constantly bob their head up and down or twitch their legs back and forth. I asked the vet assistant what this meant and he said it is because they had distemper as puppies - a viral disease we regularly vaccinate for in the west and therefore rarely see. While these dogs have recovered from the disease, the neurological symptoms remain and slowly diminish over time. There is no treatment for this and the poor things have to live like this for months or maybe years.  I suppose for most, however, this twitching is the least of their problems.

Yesterday we had four new dogs come in, but not from the ambulance as they usually do. A woman from Ahmedabad (a city several hours away) had brought them in.  I figured she had found them on the street and was surrendering them to animal aid.  I came to understand that she has over 20 dogs living in her small house as she is taking them in off the street. Her neighbors are angry at the situation, angry enough that they actually took her from her home and beat her. (Another statement on pain as a cultural concept, perhaps?) She is very attached to each of the dogs and it was a struggle for her to even surrender the four that she did. I went and had a look at the new members of the shelter.  Two of them, Octopus and Tarzan, are incredibly deformed (see photo of octopus, black. Look closely.) Their forelimbs stick out at bizarre angles and the tops of their feet have developed huge pads of skin as they are what come in contact with the ground. Tarzan is able to use his deformed limbs but Octopus cannot - she moves around by throwing herself forward, using her rear legs as propellers.   One would think this would slow her down, but she moves around with agility and her tail never stops wagging.  She must have been born with these severe deformities and had an animal like this been born back in the states, it would have surely been euthanized. It all really makes me stop and think...

Pain as a cultural construct?

Yes, we are going there.

I had always thought pain was pain and suffering was suffering. I am now beginning to wonder if our perception of pain varies from culture to culture...

I talked with Jim and Naomi about this concept today. Naomi is a young woman from Canada but has lived in Kenya for the las 8 years.  She said that she feels as though there is a different regard for human life in Africa and that she has seen dead and dying people on the side of the road with other people waking by doing nothing about it.  She explained that it seems downright backwards for people who are so family oriented, welcoming and kind to their neighbors to have such a disregard for other human lives.

Jim told a story about a man who has sat on the same cement block for ten years now in the center of Udaipur, ironically right near one of the world's most luxurious hotels: the Oberoi Udaivillas. He has lived the last ten years of his life on this one cement square while neighbors bring him tea and small amounts of food. Jim described him as possibly demented and very old and frail at this point.  About a week ago Jim was walking though the city and noticed this man had a bad wound on his leg. Jim collected some bandage material and dressed the wound, a very painful procedure for such a deep injury. The man barely flinched. Are people in other parts of the world more tolerant of pain? He continued to say that he sometimes sees men and women walking down the road with serious injuries such as broken bones but not doing a thing about it. He said that having lived in India for several years he noticed that adults don't make a fuss when their children get injured, whereas in our society we are quick to (in his words) "kiss the boo-boos."

 I think I mentioned before that these animals we see are exceptionally tolerant of the things we do to treat their tender wounds.  Are the animals in India also more tolerant of pain? Are we, in the western world, over-sensitized to pain? Is this necessarily a bad thing? Am I going to be desensitized to animal suffering since I am surrounded by so much of it on a daily basis here? I know a certain amount of desensitization is necessary to protect my sanity and to keep myself coming back day after day.

I see now why they don't euthanize more of the animals at the hospital.  My first day here I was shocked that they insisted on keeping some of the struggling animals alive.  What I realize now is that these animals are fighters.  They fought hard to survive on the street and animal aid wants to give them every possible opportunity to live.

I am beginning to understand that in India life, and with it suffering, is real, it is everywhere, it is in your face.

Side notes from today:
- Got stuck walking around, semi lost in a monsoon downpour
- Met a girl from western mass! who is staying at the same hotel but leaving tomorrow.

Gadha, gaay, kutta.

Consider this a follow-up to yesterday and other random thoughts...

I talked more with Jim today about why the stray dog population exists.  He confirmed what I had already seen: animals living off trash in the streets.   Since there is no organized trash collection, it accumulates leaving the dogs (and pigs, and children in some cases) to literally survive off of garbage.  I asked why nothing was being done to correct the situation and he explained that the city has started putting out blue trash bins in an attempt to control the street trash.  The problem is that there are no lids for the cans so the animals can easily take what they want. So instead of helping the situation and deterring stray animals, it is actually making it easier by collecting and presenting the food for them and effectively perpetuating the problem.

Today I was sent to help with large animal treatments. As most of you who are reading this know, large animal medicine is NOT my thing. I am much more comfortable around the smaller, more manageable species.  In any case, I was there to help where needed so I headed off to the cattle paddock. We started on a cow with several wounds.  After cleaning them the vet nurse motioned for me to give the injections - quite a different technique than that used for small animals.  I did as he showed me and pounded he hind end with my fist and jabbed the needle into the muscle, attached the syringe and injected 5 milliliters of antibiotics. We continued for over an hour.  I helped him re-splint a donkeys broken front leg, treat a cow who's femur was sticking out of the medial side of the leg, and flush out a severely infected udder. (Confession: while these treatments are exciting I actually seem to spend most of my day pushing pus out of purulent abscesses and plucking ticks off of dogs and squishing them with my foot. Glamorous, I know.)

I sat and "talked" with the vet assistant for a while.  Communicating was difficult as his English was not very good and his accent very thick. He did show me the medicines he carried with him in a basket, some of them I recognized: gentamicin, atropine, prednisone while others were completely foreign. Whether this is because I am only one year into vet school or because they are actually foreign medications, I am not sure.  I told him I want to learn Hindi and he started pointing at animals and telling me how to say donkey (gadha) cow (gaay)  dog (kutta) etc. It is frustrating to have everyone talk around you, all the time, in a language you know nothing about.

Just as we were finishing treatments the rain came.  It started off light but quickly turned into a total downpour.  It rained so loudly on the tin roof I couldn't hear what anyone was saying.  Streams began to form in the dirt around the hospital as the rain intensified and thunder rumbled in the distance.  I guess it is monsoon season, after all. The rain didn't phase the dogs one bit as most were curled up in their afternoon siestas. It went on for only about a half an hour and then the sun was out again. The rain had cooled everything down nicely and the air seemed fresher.

I think I forgot to mention the other day that the ambulance team had an incredible rescue! A young fox was found swimming in a well.  The small animal had most likely been swimming all night and was struggling to stay afloat and it appeared to be nearly passing out from exhaustion. It took the team 2 hours but they were able to save it.  They brought the fox to the hospital and I was able to get a look at the terrified creature.  Probably suffering from hypothermia we put it in the procedure room and coved it's cage.  I talked with Claire about what they were going to do and she told me that they were supposed to surrender it to the wildlife rescue but she knew it would ultimately end up in the zoo if they did.  She told me that animals in zoos here have terrible lives, "they are put in a room to rot" she said. After ensuring the animal was strong, healthy and old enough to be re-released, animal aid brought it back to an area near the well.  They opened the cage and it took off! Claire explained that this was a success story in that most of the wildlife they try to rescue have broken bones or are too weak to survive on their own.  Hooray little fox!

Another great rescue - Erika got Sruti to leave her asshole husband, something that never happens. Hooray Sruti!

Be and let be.

So why so many street animals? Why doesn't anyone own them or seem to care? 

Erika explained it like this:  Be and let be. A motto that the people of India seem to live by. I suppose In a country with so many people this type of attitude is necessary to some degree - mind yourself and don't get too involved with other people's business. For a city that is full of chaos - and what seems to be disorganization - the people are incredibly mellow  (a far cry from the uptight Bostonians.)  It's this attitude combined with a lack of education that is to blame for their disregard and lack of care for the street animals.  Let them exist, don't bother them and they won't bother you.  

It's not only the animals that hurt from this common philosophy.  Erika told me that Sruti, a woman who works at the hospital, came to her door that morning because she was being beaten by her husband. Erika was sure neighbors and others knew what was going on but didn't do anything. Be and let be.

While on the topic I thought I would share this blurb from my Rajasthan travel guide: 

"You don't have to be long in Rajasthan to realize that women are rarely seen or heard. As part of the state's feudal legacy, the Purdah system, by which married women are kept isolated and under veil by their husbands, is still widespread in rural areas." I noticed this while out in the village near the hospital.  A veiled woman and her husband stopped for lunch where we were eating and she sat silent, facing the opposite direction of her husband. 

The book continues, "the literacy rate of women in Rajasthan is one of the worst in India: 25 percent, versus more than double that for men. Women living in the state's rural areas are arguably the most repressed in all of India. By one account half are forced into marriage by age fifteen and despite the intense work of internationally supported NGOs which work to valorize the contributions of women to rural life, economic independence remains at best a distant dream for most." 

Shit.