nearly 80 dogs sterilized in our week-long event

We recently teamed up with the well-established Lanta Animal Welfare (LAW) to do a mobile sterilization clinic in the nearby district of Nuea Klong. This is an area that is about 15 km from Krabitown and it is considerably more rural than the city is. Just like anywhere in this country there are a bunch of temples here where animals are frequently dropped off by owners that no longer want them.

The monks do a good job of providing a much better life for these animals than they would experience on their own but for the most part, these dogs did not end up being sterilized in the past and therefore they simply replicate as fast as they possibly can. Due to the relative safety of most temple complexes and because the dogs and cats are normally provided with food, they tend to have pups as frequently as possible. This quickly becomes a problem as the temples are soon overrun with puppies.

Despite the Buddhist belief of looking after all living creatures, disease and parasites soon will set in on the pack and normally, very little is done to remedy an outbreak. The animals simply die off and the process eventually ends up repeating itself. Our aim is to eventually manage to control the animal population so that this suffering can come to an end.

This is an extremely difficult task to accomplish and in many ways we don't actually think that we ever will be able to completely eliminate the problem of overpopulation in the stray animal world. Just because you can't totally succeed at something doesn't mean that doing nothing at all is a better alternative. We realize that this Sisyphean task has no finish line but we do all that we can to eliminate as much suffering as we possibly can.

With the help of the monks and partner organizations like Lanta Animal Welfare, we make a dent in the problem every time we have one of these mobile clinics. Hopefully the additional sterilization of nearly 80 dogs will be able to ensure that the ones that are alive now will have a better life.