gretchen8642

Every single day. There are a few animals that live at the shelter that are paralyzed from the neck down, that basically just lie on the ground getting sores on their joints and wait for someone to bring water close enough for them to drink it. It's a miserable, horrifying existence.

There are birds without wings, monkeys without arms... I remember one dog in particular had two broken femurs that a poorly qualified vet had attempted to fix with metal pins. Both pins had failed, and now four fragments of bone were exposed to the air. It was in so much pain that it was hyperventilating and shaking; we didn't even have strong pain killers for it. I wanted that puppy to die, and I'd never experienced that feeling before.

Overall, I think the shelter is doing a net positive for the animals in the area. There are a lot of minor injuries or treatable problems (like parasite infestations) that are dealt with for free and in an efficient way.

But I struggled a lot with the no euthanasia policy for sure.

In general we'd just treat it and not say anything.

But one of the vets was telling me a Jain guy brought in a dog, and the vet was taking ticks off of it. 'No!' said the gentleman, collecting the ticks, 'we mustn't kill them!' He then released the ticks into the grass and all was well.

I just liked the image of a live release tick program.

India was a mixed bag. I'm a young, conventionally attractive-ish white woman, and I was subjected to a lot of harassment that I found very dehumanizing. On the other hand, I saw some incredible pieces of history and art (like the boddhi tree where Buddha apparently did his first sermon, the Taj Mahal, two wild tigers at Khana national park, etc), and was amazed by the chaos and liveliness of India.

But behind all of that there's this tremendous, endless poverty and suffering that is inescapable-- there are whole families that live on the street, children that I would guess were four or five alone at night, begging for money. Some very elderly or crippled people were just lying on the ground, there are homeless animals everywhere just eating garbage and getting hit by cars or starving.

It was hard. It was very hard. But it was an incredible learning experience that put a lot of my own struggles into perspective.

I kept telling myself that I was there for a reason and it was my duty to do the best I could. We had this one dog (the last picture in the second album) that was brought to me by the vet techs-- they told me to redress the wound (which was completely covered in gauze).

Something felt wrong as soon as I touched it; the foot was wiggling in a way that it shouldn't. I opened the bandage and found that most of the skin was gone, the knee and the ankle were completely open, and that the foot itself was rotting and malodorous. At this point a guy I didn't know was video taping me, and I looked to the main vet and asked when they were going to amputate the leg.

'We're not. Just dress it.'

I stared at him for a moment and waited for him to correct himself. 'This is not okay.' I told him. 'This is never, EVER going to heal, and redressing it is a complete waste of time, money and materials, and you're prolonging the suffering of this animal in such a way that in any other country you'd have lost your license. You can't do this, this is NOT okay, and you HAVE to amputate the leg or I'm going to the board of directors.'

They said they'd amputate it. It took a week and a half to get it done because of idiotic time management. I made sure she had the pain medication she needed because fuck me if anyone else was taking care of it.