The story of unconditional love - three sisters and their love of dogs!

Abandoned white, male Labrador found near XXX road, XX city. Urgently require a foster home or details of the owner. Please share or contact xxxx for more information.

How many times have you come across a post on Facebook with words like this?

There has been a significant rise in cases of pet owners abandoning their furry friends in the last couple of years. What happens to these domesticated pets once they are out on the street?

Manjiree, Anjali and Vandana are three sisters in Pune who are better known as animal welfare activists. These three working professionals used to reserve a part of their income for animal welfare activities and Vandana, decided to leave her long term corporate job to set-up her own dog hostel a few years ago.

We met with Manjiree Patawarrdhan Rajgopaul  who spoke to us about their love of dogs and the sad condition of pets in our country.

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We were introduced to animals from a young age. We grew up in the Middle East and in those areas you are never exposed to the concept of pets like cats and dogs. But vacations in India were always like a trip to the zoo. We used to bring animals home and play with them. This childhood exposure helped us understand more about animals. We eventually moved back to India and our real animal welfare work started around 2008 when Vandana rescued 8 puppies. The mother had died and we had to foster the puppies at home, give them the right type of food and care so they would live and grow to be healthy dogs.

Our first pet was a Cocker Spaniel. We did not know much about community dogs (street dogs) back then. When the puppies started growing, we found out about adoption camps and went for our first adoption camp at Blue Cross, Pune.

This turned out to be an eye opener and we eventually started getting more involved. At the time, there was an ngo that was running the PMC pound. But when we first stepped into the PMC pound, we saw the plight of the animals with our own eyes.

Hygiene levels were – 0

Food quality – 0

Awareness and care of the animals – 0

We started visiting the pound every Sunday with the aim of improving their living condition.

These animals need these 3 things to stay healthy. If not, there is no quality of life. The animal won’t eat if it is not kept well. And they do deserve a good quality of life!

We started contributing essentials like chicken, mutton, eggs…in all we would ferry about 20 kgs of food to the pound.  We had to face a lot of obstacles because the staff there wouldn’t cooperate. The staff weren’t even bothered about the state of the animals, they didn’t maintain a proper record of the dogs either. Furthermore, when we tried to step in and help in our own way, we faced a lot of resistance from the pound authorities.

But we persisted...

Once the ngo’s tenure with the pound was over, there was no place for the dogs.

We talked to the authorities and asked if we can help make the area better for the animals. We started cleaning up the place, we drew the required finances from our own pocket. We were all working professionals, so we would keep some money aside for our animal welfare projects.

Now the thing is that - the job of the ngo is to get figures of sterilisation up. The pound or corporation's job is to capture the dogs and keep them there.

Permission to walk into the pound and start cleaning up was a challenge. The area was so badly kept and the odour thanks to the lack of hygiene was astonishing. With no external monetary help, we slowly started getting things that would benefit the dogs, things like – pedigree, supplies, etc.

Getting the dogs’ good nutritional food, voluntary help, getting people to get their hands dirty and be part of the movement was a problem. With influence from political parties and some help from external parties later on, we found a way forward.

Now there are two broad problem areas today when it comes to pet management. First off, there are no clear rules in place for animal owners. Secondly, there are no policies in place for animal welfare.

Within Pune there are 10 active foster homes. Each home fosters not less than 4 dogs at a time. They take care of everything from finances to medical requirements of the dogs. Support comes from a network of friends and family members.

There are very few active pet rescue and animal shelters that actually do good work. Blue Cross and ResQ are two well-known ones in Pune. But in terms of Government run bodies, institutes like SPCA, Pune are defunct. This happens due to lack of funds and proper management.

The top threats to dogs (street dogs and domestic dogs) according to me are:

-Severe In-breeding.

When tele-com brand Vodafone used a pug in a series of advertisements, there was sudden rise in demand of the pug. This led to a lot of in-breeding and in turn, this affected the quality of the new born puppies. In-breeding led to early deaths too. The average life of a dog is 12-14 years depending on the breed and the overall health of the animal. But suddenly, pugs seemed to be experiencing more health problems and dying within 2-3 years.

-In our country we don’t have laws for breeders

-We don’t have laws to register a home pet

While it is compulsory to register your pet abroad, in India, lack of policies leads to more cases of abandonment.

I do feel that compulsory registration will reduce cases of abandonment.

It is very easy to get fake paper work done here. So it is that much easier to leave your dog and run away.

In order to just look after the 4 dogs that I’ve “adopted” on my street I spend 6k per month on their food. Vaccination is a separate expense. On special days like Valentine day, I wanted to treat them with some goodies and so that leads to a different expense.

I do believe that as a community, we need to be more aware. We need to participate more towards animal welfare. Dogs are like our friends. More of us should adopt street dogs. And if not adopt street dogs, at least not abandon the one that you have.

After all, would you abandon your child on the road? Of course, some adults do tend to do that too so, when it comes to animals…how can we expect better?

Before signing off though, I would like to tell people to come out and be more aware. Pay attention to the dogs on your street. If you treat them well, they can actually be trained to guard your area or building! So why ill-treat them? In most cases, a dog won't attack you unless you provoke it to. 

The world after all was not only created for humans to exist...