Care for Paws Camp 2022!

A few weeks ago we finally had our supposedly annual Care for Paws Sterilization Camp and it was a great success. Overall we sterilized and vaccinated 36 dogs, and vaccinated 3 more puppies. Not to mention we even witnessed the successful c section of 3 premature puppies!

This year we had the privilege of being hosted at the Sri Lankan Army Camp who had set aside a space for us to work. So after arriving at school around 8:00 we headed over there to meet our partners Adopt a Dog and Vets for a Better Future and get started.

At that point there were only two dogs so it was our chance to just get a feel for what to do and get comfortable. But it wasn’t long before the first truckload of dogs arrived and everything got started.

 

Here’s the basic rundown of the process according to the vet we worked with: Only about 3% of the dogs we see on the street are truly feral dogs because in Sri Lanka there are a lot of “community dogs” they live in the streets of an area but everyone in the neighborhood takes care of them together. What the team does is drive around to different neighborhoods and collect any dogs on the street who haven’t been fixed, and partially sedating them. They keep track of where all of them got picked up. Then the truckload arrives back at the camp. From there the dogs are taken and sedated one by one to be sterilized, and have their ears tabbed to mark it. Afterwards they get put in the bigger enclosure with all of us where they’ll slowly wake up from the sedation and we’re responsible for monitoring them and giving them a saline drip for hydration. As they wake up they’re vaccinated, fed, given water and then once they’re good to go the truck takes all of them back to where they were picked up.

Needless to say it was a long day but there were some clear highlights I wanted to share!

The first was probably learning the different procedures that they do for dogs and to explain this the vet actually drew on one of the dogs for us. He explained the intra veinous area for the sedation, the subcutaneous for the saline drip, and the intramuscular for vaccines.

 

Another highlight was witnessing the both of 3 puppies and learning to take care of them. We were sometime in the middle of our camp when all of a sudden the vet handed this little thing out to one of the other vets, lo and behold it was a  tiny premature puppy, 2 others soon followed. The vets worked hard to keep them alive, clearing their lungs and helping them breathe and they made it! afterwards it was up to us to keep them warm, safe and to feed them some milk.