Animal Rescue

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We'd met a girl during our lazy days at Liliput who'd mentioned that there was an animal rescue centre in Goa where you could volunteer. As all previous efforts to volunteer had lead to nothing, the 4 weeks we had committed to staying in Arpura meant that we could finally justify spending time doing something altruistic. 
So we've spent our first week as Goan residents at the International Animal Rescue Centre, which has it's head office in Sussex. I tried my hardest not to go into recruitment mode, and to this day I have resisted selling them a charity specialist accountant.....
The centre in Goa can manage around 100 dogs, plus 50 kittens and puppys, snakes, cows, pigs and other random creatures. It has quite a good name in the local area - 10 years ago there was no such thing as animal welfare, aparently locals treated all animals inhumanely and they have done loads in improving welfare for the street (and homed) animals. They've got about 40 paid staff in Goa plus volunteers. Volunteers were welcome to do whatever they could but esssentially the main task was to ensure that the dogs- most of whom were recovering from the sterilisations that they were in for - got a daily walk and some attention. Depending on the number of volunteers, this could be quite a demanding tasks and a fun, rewarding task can easily become tedious. Particularly when a lot of the paid staff were often standing around not doing a lot. Grrr.
Rach had brought the idea into my head that I might like to retrain to become a vet, so I wanted to try out as many elements of the job as possible. I got involved with leading on the de-ticking of puppies, helping the vets give injections, carrying dogs covered in shit out of their kennels, cleaning up shit, washing shit out of dogs fur and stepping in shit. I dealt with it all pretty well, so I get the feeling I'll be Chief Nappy Changer in a few years time! 
On our second week there, we rode to the Chairman of IAR's home which was a 30 minute ride up into the forest.
All of the centre's rescued monkeys lived there, and every day all the monkeys came out of there cages to play in and around the swimming pool. We'd never touched monkeys before - we seen plenty of them in India up in the North but never dared get close to them as they are a known menace! Getting up close with them - in particular going swimming with them - was quite a unique experience and one that was really enjoyable. A slightly better experience for me though, as monkey's are notoriously sexist and generally prefer to hang out with males. Poor Rach got her hair pulled, her arms nibbled, and her bikini undone. Then she told me to stop and remember we were there for the monkeys.
Afterwards we went inside into John's home where his maids made us tea and we got chatting about how the charity worked and about the problems they had. John was having quite a few problems which were very similar to those Rachel deals with in the NHS and so we ended up chatting for over two hours and agreed to help looking at how the centre and the charity operates with a view to making things better. Suddenly things seemed a lot more interesting, and exactly what we were looking for for the CVs!
So since then, we've been working every day at the centre looking at all of the problems they were having and meeting with all of the management to understand their views. It was a
great experience working together with Rach as we seemed to cover things from all angles - as a result things seemed to start improving at the centre, which was great to see.
On our second week there I finally got the chance to go in and watch surgery - two both spays and one dog castration. I found it all very interesting, and even watching the poor fella's balls get popped out and chopped off wasn't too disturbing! The blood and the cutting and burning of flesh wasn't an issue at all, so I could definitely go into something medical if I found 40 grand lying around to pay for the training...! The most bizarre thing that I saw in surgery was a giant pickle jar full of dog testicles - they get paid a fiver from the Indian government for every dog castrated - and every month, some poor government official had to come there to count them!!!! What a job! 400 balls a month, even Paul would find that daunting...

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Comments

[Jill Dunkley]

Happy Christmas
Hi guys just wanted to wish you both a Very happy Christmas. We think its amazing what you are doing and looks like you are having a lush time. Take care of each other and look forward to your next blogg. We are off to Egypt New Years day for some diving. Love always Jill and Dave xxx