MANGE AND TVT !

Having settled Yashoda into Rani Park in Kathmandu, I would visit her every other day or so. She was in good hands now in the care of DREAMS, as were the other cows and calves who had come to settle there. Walking the streets in these cities, overcrowded with people, dogs and cows, one is going to come across problems. And I did not have to go very far to find the next set of “problems…”.

Just outside the newly formed cow sanctuary, were a group of the saddest looking dogs I had ever seen. Hairless, depressed, itchy, run down, and full of TVT’s. What’s a TVT? You may ask. It is a transmittable venereal tumor. In other words, a sexually transmitted disease, that leaves a giant tumor looking growth on the dogs’ organs. The females look as though the uterus has fallen out, and the dogs just look like they have a horribly enlarged, mangled, gnarly penis. It can do all sorts of horrible things inside the body as well as outside, but, the good news is, it is highly treatable.

So, by now, my remaining time was running short in Nepal and I was anxious to return to Mother India …I can only stay away so long. What to do? I had met a lovely woman on previous visits who was doing local work in her village. It was worth a call to get information from her as to which vets might I be close to, and get at least started on this. Well, the rain of miracles continued. Kate came out to meet me at the site, and, shocked as I was to see all these dogs, quietly commented … “Wait a minute, I took a dog from this area some weeks ago with the same problem.”

We now had an actual case of “Before” and “After.”

She turned out to be so lovely Kate did not have the heart to bring her back, and was not aware of the extent of the problem in the area. We did a quick survey, took photos, and quickly got one male I had been searching for into the vet’s office. Kate agreed to keep him for follow up care.

I knew this wasn’t enough, and knew it was not fair to burden one person with such an enormous project, and who would pay for all this…?  So, I contacted some lovely people I had met in Pokhara on a previous visit who had an organization called HART; Himalayan Animal Rescue Trust. They do amazing work in Pokhara and the outlying villages, and I thought it was worth a shot to bring this to their attention.

One email got a quick reply, of sure, we can help with the funding. Kate Clendon, of Kopan Community Animal Care, then agreed to continue the treatments of these dogs.

“My” work had never been so easy!

There were local people who had shown great interest in seeing these dogs improve. They were incredulous when we showed them “before and after” photos, and wanted to see success in the condition of their community dogs. And there was, and so it is!

To see the transformations in these dogs health, lives, and spirit is a joy to behold.   

                                   Next

YASHODA, Nepal Revisited

Yashoda

Time in Nepal used to be an obligatory period of drudgery and dislike. I could stay in that state of mind, and react to all the frenzy of the tourist scene, the rudeness of the locals who have seen too many rude tourists passing through, or I could try to escape this mindset and replace it with one of productivity and ease.

I ended up staying in some lovely Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, and an Anni gompa (nunnery) with great joy and satisfaction. The Anni gompa was close enough to Kathmandu that I could make visits to the city as often as I liked, and make good use of my time there.

Kathmandu is full of bedbugs and mange! The dogs suffer terribly from the mange, while the tourists silently accept the bedbugs. It is painful to watch pained, pink skinned hairless dogs scratching and scratching. With all this scratching, they often create secondary infections by tearing the skin, and bacteria quickly settles in. Ivermectin for the mange, and an appropriate antibiotic for the secondary skin infection. With at least two months there, I could easily follow a specific group and have them treated thoroughly. And it was done.

In these travels, I came to have my heart touched by an old sad cow. Old, no longer able to produce milk, she had been turned out, onto the streets to fend for herself. I first noticed her in Durbar square, close to the old hippie scene, Freak street. She caught my eye as she was quite large, clearly old, and seemingly pregnant??? She had a huge swollen belly … but not. I saw her from her left side, she was impossible to miss, and as I walked around her, and saw the right side, I could only gasp. She was skeletal. It was the strangest sight I had seen in a cow; half bloated, and half skeletal.

I called all the animal rescue groups in Kathmandu, there are many, and none wanted to help her. So, daily, I started to feed her, and tried to get a medical opinion as to what was going on here. My concerns were ingestion of too many plastic bags, which the cows cannot pass. Plastic bags that still have a bit of food in them, become part of the daily diet. These street cows eat everything, there is not enough proper food available for them.  Cardboard boxes, licking posters glued onto walls, plastic bags, and the odd bit of rotting vegetables in the swept up garbage is the daily diet for the street cow. It’s all they can find. They are forced to become scavengers for food, and do not do well. Occasionally a kind soul will offer a few scraps of food, but it is not enough to sustain them.

So, what to do? Finally a veterinary doctor came out, and determined it was not ingestion of plastic bags that caused this, but more likely overproduction of milk, causing a collapse of the internal lining of the stomach, or all four stomachs as in the case of cows. So basically, the stomach has nothing to hold it up, and kind of shifts like a giant hernia. What causes this, is very possibly hormone injections which will increase the production of milk to an unhealthy level to the cow, but a financially profitable level for the farmer. Prognosis is not good. He suggested surgery at an exorbitant, foreigners rate, but no place to keep her for recovery, and no guarantee that she would survive the surgery. NOT an option.

I continued daily feedings, and although I was growing to love her, she repeatedly showed me her bit of an anti-social side, with turning her head away, and her “why are you bothering me while I am napping”, glances. I loved her all the more for her independence, her strong character, and her clear displays of like and dislikes.   The locals started to take notice, and started to help in her care and feedings. It was nice, and she seemed to settle in comfortably and she found her favorite spots for resting throughout the day and night.

And one day the local police came up to me…

“What are you doing? We have seen you here daily.”

“I come to feed her.”

“Do you work for an NGO (non-for-profit)”

“No.”

“How long are you here?”

“Two months.”

“Let’s come inside and talk.”

I get more questioning from more than one officer,  with repeated notice that tourists are supposed to be tourists.

“I’m touring the streets and dogs and cows are on the streets… How can I not see them…?”

I leave, thinking, good god, they want to harass me for doing something kind…? And am I about to be deported ... Thailand here I come?

I’m followed by one of the officers, he comes up to me and says lets go in here, the Kumari house, courtyard, and we can talk. Shit, now what, I can’t help but think. Another officer follows him.

“We are simple farmers, we come from the villages, and we also care for this cow.”

“We think what you are doing is wonderful, and we want to help.”


I was in shock. Happy shock, but shock. 

The bottom line was that the superiors, local officials would not let her stay in Durbar Square, and after I would leave, there would not be enough food for her anyway. So she had to be moved, but they would personally help me with her transport if needed, and they would give me time to place her elsewhere.

The search for a new location began in earnest …. It took me to the Hare Krishna Temple close to Budhanilkanta, [Krishna -  cows -  I tried to convince them of their duty to take care of abandoned cows - ],  to a self styled orphanage in a small village run by a French monk I met at a Farmer’s Market, and to any and every grazing space I could find between Kathmandu and her outer rings….! The Hare Krishna’s came close, after much negotiation, with yes, and no, and yes, but … It was just taking too long to get a definitive answer. We left that as a possibility to be explored in my next visit, to be continued later.

Then I found it! The perfect spot appeared to me. Pashupatinath is the largest Hindi temple, complex in Kathmandu. As foreigners, we are allowed to enter only certain areas of the complex, and only we pay the exorbitant entry fee to maintain the holy separatists. [A side note, there is easy open, FREE access from the back side. Watch the school children, they cut through this way everyday, follow them and, you’re in!] Next to Pashupatinath is a tourist bus park, and next to the tourist bus park, is a HUGE, fully enclosed forested park, and I mean huge, and totally unused. The tourists, in their acts of accruing good karma, regularly bring boxes of food, for the monkeys. Why not for the cows as well, I could not help but think.

Next step in the chain of miracles, I finally got a call from an organization, called DREAMS. They did not yet have a space, but were new, with high hopes and big plans. We talked. Why not move Yashoda in the Rani park area, next to Pashupatinath; who would even notice one more cow wandering in the forest. Food was bountiful, and fruits could be easily supplemented by the “holy pilgrims” with their pre-determined acts of kindness on their way to the holy temples. We all agreed it was a good plan.

The move took place, and it was simple. In the early hours we hired a truck and moved her in. She would follow me anywhere at this point, even up a ramp into the truck, and down the ramp into her new home. Yashoda being Yashoda, she had her own mind set, and made a couple of attempts at exploring the outer roads. She escaped from the one and only gate. She would quickly be found, brought back, and in few days settled in to the realization that this was her new home, and it was good. Dreams had daily volunteers coming, spending much of the day there, and added several sick and injured cows and calves. We built several shelter style tents, to protect them from the sun, and rain, and give them a nice bed to sleep in at night. In the day, they were free to wander and graze in this vast open secure, and bountiful forest.

Life being what it is, we cannot stay in one place. The shelter saw its good times and bad. Cows and calves that looked like they were recovering, only to suddenly become very sick and die, to others who continue to thrive. Yashoda had a good six months. She was well fed, free, formed friendships and experienced love. The winter, although they had blankets and shelter, was too hard on her aging body. She did not survive the cold, and left the body in January.

It was difficult for me to hear this. 

I had since been long back in India, and all reports were that Yashodha was doing well. My own health had been challenged at this time, and there would have been nothing I could do anyway as far as going to her and helping her myself.

Spiritually, philosophically, one is reminded over and over of the impermanent state of the universe and our daily lives. Life includes everything, not just the “good” or the “bad”, but all of it. It can be joy, a feeling of bliss, a feeling of success, but it’s also pain and sadness, anger, confusion, and fear. To truly be alive is to admit that we cannot protect ourselves from any of it. So, we can embrace life in its totality, without fear, and make the choice to love, or to numb ourselves from life. Thank you Yashoda, and Dreams, for teaching me this lesson again, and letting me love you, and letting me embrace the sadness of your no longer being here.

                       

                    ... and as Krishna plays his flute, we continue the dance ...

IT TOOK A POKE

I had recently returned from yet another mandatory exile in Nepal, albeit this time it was a fruitful adventure, with the start of a new goshala and a small community dog care program, and the pleasure of teaching English to Tibetan nuns who were new to Nepal. Back home now my priority was to make my usual “checks” on who was still around, and in what condition would I find them. As usual, it was varied. The ones who had ongoing problems, would look battered but ready for new care, others looked marginally well, and others looked perfectly fine. And some of course, would be missing to the ongoing battlefields of the streets.

Mating season had started, it takes time to get them all under “family planning,” and the battle scars of the males were showing. It’s usually a tear to the neck, and often a bite hold on the leg to show the final supremacy of  the “Top Dog”, and alpha male. At the end of a long, first, hot day, I came upon a dog at the far end of Ram Jhula. He was propped against a wall, his breath was shallow, and he had OLD bandages on his neck and head. And he had a horrible, smelly maggotted leg.  I was tired, and not happy to see this so late in the day. I stroked him, tried to give him some water, offered food, but he was pretty unresponsive. Shit, I thought. Someone had started care, but not followed through and now this dog is slowly dying. It looked too late, and it was too late in the day to take him anywhere or to get an IV drip started on him. My own fatigue had set in, and sadly, I walked away.

I stopped in the middle of the road about six feet further down to let some motorbikes pass, and stood there for a moment, exhausted. I got a poke. At the back of my leg, I got a strong jab and looked down. It was him. He had managed to get up, follow me, and give me a sign. He wanted to live. I have to admit I had not recognized him, there are many orange and white street dogs in this area, but he remembered me and wanted help. I picked him up and carried him to a side walkway and had to decide what to do with him. All I could do for that night was change his bandages, marginally disinfect the wounds, and bandage his leg. I got some electrolytes into him, and put him in a safe spot, covered for the night.

The next morning more proper care would begin. He had a “home” on the ghats, and was accepted by the other dogs and people who live there, so this is where we would keep him for his care. Antibiotics, IV drips, vitamins, and two to three checks throughout the day and night were all we could do for him. The Babas watched. Some helped, some remained aloof, and some said I was putting medicines into a dead dog.  But they were used to seeing me here, and accepted.

He may still have looked dead to the world, but in a few days he marginally improved. By day five he was able to lift his head, take a bit of water, and look me in the eye. His leg still looked bad, and we were not sure if he would keep the leg, but we were hopeful and encouraged by his obvious improvements.

Day Six

The Doctor and I stayed the usual hour with him in the morning, and I relaxed a bit, and stayed on, just enjoying his company, offering my love, and enjoying the beauty of the Ganga and her endless flow. Two Babas came and we even laughed a bit at how the word was going around that I was putting medicines into a “dead” dog. We smiled, and relaxed, and Spotty sat up for the first time in days. I patted him, moved on and looked after a few more dogs. It was about 11.00 a.m.

Don’t read the rest if you want a happy ending

Around 1.00 I sat down and had a cup of chai. It was my intention to go see him again later in the day, but I heard a call, in my heart. I walked as quickly as I could, but I was still at least ten minutes away.

He was not there. The Babas were all looking at me afraid to speak, and finally one pointed. There was a man, a sweeper, in the Ganga taking a bath. Not the usual Ganga dip of joy, but a bath of different intentions, a bath one takes to wash away one’s stains. He was a sweeper, and it was his job to keep the ghat clean. He had dragged and tossed my dog into the Ganga. It had all happened maybe ten minutes earlier.  Dog’s are considered “dirty” in India, and as such, generally untouchable. He had to wash himself.

He came to me with folded palms and looked me in the eyes. He tried to claim the dog was dead; … I knew the dog was not dead…  It was his job to keep the ghat clean … A translator came and a scene quickly ensued. Everyone understood the gravity of the act and the man was afraid. He did not want my curse upon him. Somehow I spoke to him calmly and plainly. He kept asking me what I wanted him to do, what can he now do???

I made it clear I wished to never see him at this ghat again. He is never to defile the dog’s memory with his presence and the reminder of his horrific act.
Part two, he was now, every day for the rest of this life, to feed a dog. A street dog; he was to look him in the eyes and offer him food. Every day, for the rest of this life.

I have never seen him on the ghat since that day. He has kept the first promise it seems. I can only hope he has kept part two, and that somehow his heart has been touched, by looking into the eyes of a dog.

For some days I could not go to the ghat, it was too painful. Sixteen days after his death I offered food and prayers on his behalf to his companions and friends at the ghat. That day the dogs, the Babas and the beggars ate well, and I prayed.

Sister of the Tiger

Billiaria

Sister of Tiger ...What is her name I asked Sitaram Babaji. He pauses, and looks into the air for a moment, comes back to earth, and replies Billiaria. (Billie - r- ia).
I knew Billi was cat, but I asked him the meaning anyway, and he said, "sister of Tiger".

It was a beautiful name for her. She was actually a pastel tiger striped dog, more of the exotic white tiger than the golden and black. She was a pale cocoa color, with intense black and grey stripes across
her entire body and face. Her mother was a red dog, and father, unknown. There are no striped males in the area, and no other striped dogs in her litter, so her unique coloring was a mystery, and we all
knew she was special.

Not only did she have strong physical markings, but she was strong of character, and quickly made herself the alpha female of the pack as she grew. Her mother acceded her the role of dominant female with little struggle. Her two sisters were no match for her, and they also gave her full reign as leader of the pack. It was clear, Billiaria was top dog. There were no challengers.

She lived life with passion, intensity and gusto, and she always smiled. She also loved with gusto. I make it a point to not shower any of the dogs with undue affection, and no special treatment for one over the other. They have their own rules and group dynamics, and one should not interfere or show favoritism. So, although I showed her no special favors over the other pack members, she somehow adored me. It was impossible to not notice. I would be greated with leaping bounds of joy and body slams, followed with wild runs and breathy pants. If I tried to walk down her road unnoticed, she would always come darting out of hiding if she spotted me, overjoyed to see me, and pretend there was no slight on my part.

The greeting consisted of bouncing onto me, tail wags with the velocity of a cracked whip, and smiles from ear to ear. How could I not love her?

Her life was good. Sleeping inside Babajis room at night, sheltered and secure. Running along the sacred Ganges each morning, hurdling the boulders and splashing in the waters waves. Napping on the
sand in the afternoon, exploring the forests terrain at dawn and dusk, and holding enough company of humans and dogs to keep life interesting. There was food, open skies, companionship, and the freedom to run wild, and strong. Her life was untroubled, and she grew and thrived into a powerhouse of existance. Shakti, full on.

The call came as a shock. Billiaria is not well, she has not eaten for a few days. The Dr. could not come immediately, and by the next day she was gone, dead to her physical body. She was found in the rocks at the shore of GangaMa, wedged between two boulders. Cause of death, unknown.

She was admired by many. and noticed by all, with her beauty and the vibrancy of her life force. To imagine that life in that form as extinguished is hard to fathom.

May you reincarnate well, and soon, beloved Billiaria.