Common people, uncommon zeal
Dogged perseverance

A transferable job means that we move home regularly. One of the first tasks anywhere is to locate a vet who will take care of our pet and consider requests to help street dogs in distress. That’s how a little over two years ago, I found myself hurtling downhill and over streams, weaving in and out of villages on the outskirts of Kalimpong, past startled cows, past territorial village dogs upset at the clumsy intrusion. How many tumbles before you reached the Darjeeling Goodwill Animal Shelter (DGAS), I had wondered then. Now I am on my second visit to look up the people who were so helpful during my stay in Kalimpong.

Christine Townend , who lives in Australia, founded the shelter in 1994. She arrives after about 15 minutes of decent downhill trekking at the acre-and-half neatly fenced-in centre with an office, residential quarters, kennels and a tidy little OT. Most of the 20-odd vets at the centre have been foreign volunteers who made the shelter one of the most respected in town. Some are Lithuanian, like Dr Aldona Skeraityte, remembered fondly by the grateful town. The vets have changed since our last visit, but the good work has gone on. In fact, it has got better.

Although the DGAS Trust was registered in l995, the shelter came up some years later. The most visible
part of the shelter’s work began in 1999 on borrowed premises, when  it took on the uphill task of Animal
Birth Control (ABC) in line with the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines to ensure a healthy,
non-breeding and rabies-free dog population. Once inoculated, the dogs sport smart collars and are
carefully tabulated. The ABC programme is its thrust area since it involves catching, vaccinating, identifying,
sterilising, nursing and releasing after recovery, about 15 to 20 street dogs every week. WHO believes that
70 per cent of the dogs need to be vaccinated before rabies is eliminated, a figure that takes time to reach.
Says Townend, "As we commenced the programme in l999 on a trial basis only, we were not able to reach
the 70 per cent target by 2000." The present decision to employ a full-time vet seems to be working better
in this direction.

Perhaps more than in the urban plains, dogs are man’s better friends in the hills, guarding the home from predators through cold, foggy and often rainy nights, keeping the owner company through a day of collecting grass and firewood in the meadows and woods.

But man and his best friend are in danger from the killer disease. In 2000-2001, virtually the entire jackal population that strays into the villages, was wiped out by rabies. The effect was felt acutely with 294 reported cases of dog bites and 13 reported human deaths.

In 2002, when the first Indian vet of the shelter, the optimistic young Dr
Naveen Pandey took over, it came down to 23 bites (source: S.D. Hospital,
Kalimpong). As Townend affirms, "The coming of the doctor has contributed
to the efficiency of the programme."

Dog bites also decline with ABC. Keeping this in mind, ABC work has galloped in the last year. From 308 sterilisations in 1999, it went up to 668 that disastrous year, and has come down to 522 in 2002 with fewer dogs to operate upon. The total cases that the shelter attended to went up from 2,045 in 2000 to touch an all-time high of 2,457 in 2002. No mean achievement when, in the absence of an autoclave, instruments are sterilised in a pressure cooker!

With the workload in Kalimpong light, the shelter has ‘adopted’ several villages. So successful has ABC been that it is planning to train young vets in the flank method of spaying as Pandey has already been invited to Kandy and Kathmandu to demonstrate it. He attended the Asia For Animals Symposium in September, 2003, in Hong Kong to share his experiences while a Bodhgaya organisation has also requested help. Next year, the shelter’s experience will be shared with vets in China.

That’s a long way the plains boy has come! As Pandey confesses, when he reached DGAS in 2002, "cultural differences, difficult terrain and the demanding, round-the-clock job," had left him nervous. But for him, it has been an experience "rewarding, professionally challenging, satisfying and dignified. My dreams come true every day as I treat hundreds of animals. Christine’s concern for animals is transforming me into an animal activist. I am accepting this change and I am very happy."

Now, DGAS plans to extend its work to Darjeeling and its surrounding areas. The hidden figure here is the number of human lives touched with happiness and health. While larger cities grapple with this pressing problem, a tiny team of dedicated people has turned the tables to make man dog’s best friend. TWF

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