Summer trip 2006 – Liz’s diary
Tuesday 25th July
An 11year old girl called Lily from England had heard about the work of HAAAW in Negombo. She had been living in Sri Lanka for the past 3 months and her family was friends with our driver Anton. She asked if she could spend a day with us, helping with the animals. She was very keen and worked extremely hard, as did Andrea who also came with me and Gamini today. Lily and Andrea pictured below with the little yellow dog.
The first job of the day was to pick up the two male dogs from the Inter City State for neuter operations. They were extremely nervous. Te lady managed to get one of them out of the kennel, the other just growled. So we left the door open and all stood back. He legged it out of the kennel and had us all trying to catch him for a good five minutes. I was unsure if it was a good idea to neuter him because he was so nervous, but now we had him, I thought I would see how he traveled in the tuk tuk and at least have him blood tested. He calmed down a lot in the tuk tuk and we made friends, both the blood tests were clear so Dr Rohan would neuter them both that morning.
We then went to pick up the sickly dog from the night before. In the daylight I could see that her gums, inside of her ears and her stomach were yellow in colour. Dr Rohan diagnosed her with tick fever, jaundice and anaemia. It did not look good for the poor little dog. She had injections, tablets and had to be given glucose water every hour. The family had not even bothered to take her to the vets, so the chances of them looking after were pretty slim, but there was nothing else we could do, so we had to give them a chance. We took the dog home and explained that the dog was very sick and would die if they did not look after her and follow our instructions.
We then visited the dog with the missing eye from the day before, cleaned the eye and applied the cream. He was a terrible patient and would not keep still.
On our travels we stopped in to check on my favourite dog, who I call ‘Mangy Mama’. She was in good spirits and her pup that she was pregnant with in April was apparently healthy but now lived with a neighbour, she still had one pup alive from her litter at Xmas and he was also healthy looking, just very nervous. The black dog that lives next door had six pups, they had all lived, whereas her previous litters have all died. Three had been homed on, three lived with the mother. There was also a white dog living there that had severe heartworm in April, but he did his usual disappearing act. There was a male dog in the third house that was neutered on the April trip and a grown up pup from the last trip, but I didn’t spot her mother anywhere. We wormed and gave flea treatment to all the dogs that we could catch!!
We then received a phone call from Janice asking us to meet them at Gamini’s house; they had picked up a dog. We went straight there; Janice had seen this dog by the side of the road looking in a terrible state, she felt incredibly sorry for him so they picked him up, literally off the side of the road. He was scared, as you would imagine, he had a dodgy back leg, mange and probably a whole lot more wrong with him. Lily, Andrea and Janice gave him a good bath, Anton, Gamini, Patrick and I sorted out a kennel, rugs, and a chain for the time being until he got to know his surroundings. He was given a multi vitamin shot and left to settle in at Gamini’s house. Lily was given the job of naming him, and she fittingly called him ‘Buddy’. Pictures below.
In the evening, we visited the dog with the bad eye, but had to leave the medication for the lady to continue with, as the dog had took himself off for a walk. The lady was happy and confident to do this. We checked on the little yellow dog and gave her tablets. The last job of the evening was to pick up the two boy dogs that had been operated on that day (pictured below) and take them back to the apartment to look after them through the night, before returning them home the next day.
