Animals and Shelters

birds

I am so happy to read about your enthusiasm and willingness to help . We need lots of people like you.

However, keep in mind that while most shelters will accept strays but that bringing an animal to a shelter is not a solution in itself.
Many shelters, as elsewhere in the world, receive more animals than they get people to adopt and end up having to euthanise healthy, often young animals.

On average well-run shelters in India get about 50 to 60 people who want to adopt per month while they receive between 200 and 300 animals in the same period.

There are no-kill shelters in India but they often end up not taking animals because they do not have sufficient place. Bringing pups/kittens to those shelters offers them some chance but if they do not get adopted they often die because life in a shelter is not healthy.

Of course I do not know what your objective is.

Some people feel that it is better to take the animals off the road and have them euthanised than have them suffering on the streets.

Other people feel that living on the street is better than death and work towards sterilising & vaccinating strays to improve their life.

I do not want to judge either but do feel that there should be much more focus on adoption.

With pedigree animals becoming more in-vogue, it becomes more and more difficult to find homes for local stray dogs. However it is not impossible.

Placing advertisements in local newspapers cost very little but can result in a good number of adoptions. Talking to everybody you know about adoption can help to.

I also push companies and individuals to sponsor vaccinations and sterilizations for people who are willing to adopt but can not afford these basics. A rabies vaccination cost just Rs.50, a Seven-in-One vaccination just Rs.95 and a sterilisation Rs.200. It is really not to difficult to find a company/person that is willing to sponsor 10 or 20 of these and it can just help to get an animal adopted and offer it a decent life.

Whatever you do will be great but just be careful that what you do is what you want to do. Please do not think that simply dropping an animal at a shelter means that it gets adopted because changes tend to be slim.

Nikita

Thanks Birds,I get what you mean.Its just that the young strays may not always be able to make it on their own.If they've got their mother with them,its not a problem.But its difficult if its otherwise.Many people even abandon the young ones of their own pets.

Yeah,getting them adopted is the best option.But people are reluctant.But I've been successful a couple of times,so I'll follow your advice onwards.However if no one takes them,there's no option but to resort to shelters.That's why I was asking.

Thanks anyways.I realise that dropping strays at shelters' not the solution.I wasn't very aware of the situation earlier.It'd be really great if every stray could have a home.The roads are not a safe place.
At present we can just try to help them in our own small way,I guess.

birds

Hi Nikita,

Great to hear you have been successful with adoptions! Every one adoption is one animal off the street.

I agree it can be terribly difficult to get people to adopt. We are currently having 15 pups up for adoptions while we just homed six last week. Some of the pups who have been around for longer are starting to look miserable so we know that if we do not find homes soon they will die.

Only today while picking up a young female stray for sterilisation, I found another with nine (!) small pups (3 weeks or so). There is no point in taken them now, the shelters are full and the mother will get sick if the pups do not take her milk. So I will leave them with the mother but will feed them regularly so I can grab the mum in about 3 months for sterilisation and hopefully the babies later as well.

While getting good homes is difficult we found that if guarantee sterilisation and vaccination it gets a little easier.

If you find that some method works, please let me know so we can try it here too.

In the meantime, keep up the good work!

I found some more shelters in Pune:

Blue Cross Society
T4, Florida Estates, Keshav Nager Mundhwa,
Pune- 411036, Maharashtra, India
Phone: (0ffice): 26879184 (Hospital): 65266492
Email: pbcdas@hotmail.com
Website: www.bluecrosssocietypune.org
Activities: Animal shelter, veterinary hospital, animal birth control programme,awareness drives, rehoming of abandoned pets
and stray animals, counseling of pet owners.

Pune SPCA
Sir M.N.Mehta Vety. Hospital, 2390 Bhawanipeth
PUNE - 411 042, Maharashtra, India.

Sadhu Vaswani Mission
10, Sadhu Vaswani Road
PUNE - 411 001, Maharashtra, India.
Tel: + 91 (212) 623 847 Fax: + 91 (212) 612 2406
Email: jvaswani@vsnl.net

Shree Jivdaya Mahamandal
H.O.: 364, Raviwas Peth, Bhagwan Adinath Chowk
PUNE - 411 002, Maharashtra, India.
Tel: + 91 (20) 635 2681 Fax: + 91 (20) 447 3396
Email: ashish_shaha@hotmail.com

World Foundation on Reverence For All Life
116, Koregaon Park
PUNE - 411 001, Maharashtra, India.
Tel: + 91 (20) 613 5919 Fax: + 91 (20) 613 5919

Interesting article on animal welfare activities in Pune: http://priyankagrover.wordpress.com/...e-centre-pune/

arianex33

Hello everyone!
I'm glad I found this forum and maybe some of you could help me.

I'm Canadian, and I'm moving to Pune for 6 months(from september the first), where my boyfriend will be working. I want to follow him(he works in IT), but hopefully make something out of it. I love animals and I have adopted 2 stray dogs and 1 stray cat before who are in Canada at the moment. I have also worked in a petshop before.

I was wondering if any shelters could need my help, I just want to volunteer, I know the case of stray dogs in India is pretty important.

If you have any information on how I could help..donations..helping in shelters, I'd be more than happy to help!

Thank you very much!

-Ariane

arianex33

Wow! That looks great!

What you guys do is really awsome!

birds

Hi Ariane,

Welcome to IndiaMike!

Almost all shelters are always short of volunteers. I do not know any shelters in Pune personally but have worked with several others in different cities in India and it seems the situation is the same everywhere; shortage of everything including manpower.

Shelters can use help with everything including: walking dogs, fund raising, designing websites, producing information material, assisting on drives to catch strays, setting up adoption programmes, vaccinating, answering telephones, etc. There is no shortage of work, it really depend how much time you have available.

It sounds like you have experience and drive, both will be very useful and very welcome for the lucky shelter that you end up working with.

I would suggest you just contact the shelters listed or when you arrive in Pune, visit them and offer your services. I am sure there will be no shortage of offers.

If not, please let me know I will ask some of my animal welfare contacts.

arianex33

Thanks bird
I'll visit the shelters and see what I can do, I'll do anything! haha I'll even make dog biscuit if I have to! hehe

If anyone else has contacts and can help me, just let me know!

Oh and I have more than enough time to devote on shelters...(Boyfriend is at work while I'm home..)

Nikita

Hi Ariane,nice meeting you.Your enthusiasm to help our furry friends is touching.

@Birds : About the female stray,I get what you mean.Of the strays,the most affected are the females.They don't get enough to eat and to top it they've got to feed their young ones as well. The females attract more of my sympathy.One of my pets is a cross-bred female,and i'm really glad we took her in. Especially when I see the condition of so many stray females-it makes me feel like crying.

I hope you get all the 15 pups adopted.And those 9 pups as well.

About the ones I've managed to get adopted,people don't mind dogs as long as they appear to be a cross of some good breed. Like for exaple,if the dog is completely black,it does not completely look like a stray.So people are eager to adopt them.
People like pups if they're chubby and clean as well.There was this dog who was covered in muck.So I gave her a bath,dried her,combed her,removed her fleas and then the lady was quite happy to take her.
But nowadays people take strays,no matter their looks,colour etc.Its really heartening.

And thanks a lot for all that info.I'll make good use of it.
And all the efforts you're taking for the strays is really wonderful.

arianex33

Thanks Nikita!

I was referred to contact Lila from the dog shelter, to aks if she needs any help?
Do you suggest I do so?
Because I contacted PAWS and strangely enough, they didn't seem to need my help as they referred me to other places...

I find that stray dogs stand out more than purebreeds. If you have a stray, you know it looks unique and that you have your own type of dog, that's why strays are my priority

Plus I find them to be stong, affectionate little dogs hehe.

I wonder how I'll do living in India without adopting a dog!

birds

This is exactly how people should view stray dogs!

If only we could get some Indian Bollywood stars to say the same in an advertisement campaign...

Noodle

Hi Nikita!

Great to hear you are so concerned and active!

I can only agree with all that birds already said.

I just want to add:

never, ever bring an animal to the SPCA in Pune (behind MG Road)! The place is filthy and the care is bad. Most dogs there have mange, young animals have hardly a chance to survive. They feed only vegetarian good and the doogs are malnourished. I did not see much love there for the strays.

I can not recommened the Jeev Raksha either to bring animals, simply because there the money is so short that care is not guaranteed, although love for the animals is there. But they all live a poor life there, many many have mange. Nowadays they don't take in dogs easily, you would have to give a sizeable donation at the same time. And even then, Lila will try to convince you to keep the dog yourself or find a home for it. She simply can't cope with the sheer number of dogs anymore. The place is rather a chaos.

As far as I know the Blue Cross only operates a spay/neuter station in Pune, dogs are released after a couple of days after they've been operated.

The only shelter in Pune I can recommend is the Animal Farm, which I described earlier in this thread and where we set up the cattery. You find their contact details under animalfarmpune.com. But even there young animals are always more susceptible to disease when living in a shelter.

Hi arianex!

yes, you could ask Lila from Jeev Raksha if they need any help. Otherwise Sucheta from Animal Farm might be happy, but the shelter is a 45 minutes drive out of Koregaon Park - a bit of a journey in this season! But it's very beautiful out there, a great escape from the busy city.

I'm currently scheduling two operations for two young females in our street who are due to go into heat any time soon. The Blue Cross is currently so busy that they can't take them in, so we will have them done by our own vet.

Hi birds! Keep up the good work!

Greetings to all of you!

Noodle

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If in hole
stop digging.

Indian saying

Nikita

@Noodle : Thanks for your advice.It really means a lot.
I hope things at Jeev Raksha get better.I read about Lila.She's a really wonderful person to sacrifice so much for the strays.

@Ariane : Just like Noodle,even I think you should ask Lila.And your thoughts about strays are wonderful.


Okay,a question I wanted to ask-are biscuits ok for dogs to eat?

Noodle

In moderate amounts they are ok, I'd say. Just like for us. Once in a while a biscuit won't harm them.

At Dorabjee's in Moledina Rd (Pune) you get dog biscuits brand name Super Boy They don't have sugar I think, and have a little bit meat in them. I buy them sometimes and mine love them more than other biscuits.

Btw, if you want to read more about the situation at SPCA Pune search this forum - I once opened a thread about it and described what I saw there ... horrible, I still can't get the pictures out of my mind ...

kalbarri

especially native wildlife like birds and lizards etc. are cats and dogs native to india or a colonial import?

Nick-H

Who can tell? Tigers are cats...

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