Infected wounds can slowly end an animal's life
The life of a stray dog or cat can be a vicious one. There are a lot of potential injuries that exist in their world but the most common ones that we encounter in our outreach work is being struck by a motorbike or car, or a bite or scratch from another animal that the animal cannot reach with their mouth that ends up getting infected and in worse situations infested with parasites.
Warning: there are some graphic images that might disturb some people ahead
This dog is referred to as "Daan" and I don't know if it was named that by the monks or by someone else. That is just what he is known as. Daan was bitten by some other animal and it could have been another dog or a monkey. We were informed that Daan was acting strange and was hiding in the toilet at one of the temples and refusing to come out. We went to go help out and found that the wounds in his back were very deep and were not just infected, but also infested with maggots, fleas, and ticks. It was a really gruesome scene indeed.
I have some other images that are more close up but I will refrain from posting them because they are really gruesome. I think that most people find maggots crawling around inside of a living creature to be really disturbing and even though I see them on a regular basis, it is something I find disturbing as well.
In the bit of time that I spent around Daan before moving him to the veterinarian, I noticed that he was desperately trying to reach the wound with his own tongue, but it is just beyond his reach. Dogs and cats are normally quite capable of cleaning their own wounds provided they can reach them. Dog saliva contains an elevated level of antiseptic properties and while of course a proper wound dressing would be much better, they can normally stave off infection and infestation if they can lick it. That obviously is not the case here.
Because the wound was so disturbing to me, I immediately gave Daan Bravecto in the hope that it would do something for him. If the infestation exists where you can see it, you can be assured that there are internal parasites as well because that is just how they work.
The open and deep wounds on Daan's back were visited by flies and fleas, which lay their eggs inside of it, which turn into maggot worms and then these gruesome creatures start to consume the host. If left alone, this would eventually result in Daan's slow death as they would slowly eat him alive. This is a terrible way to go and this is just the way that nature functions unfortunately. We are going to intervene of course and prevent this from happening but I am a little disappointed in both myself and the watchers that we have that live at the temple for not noticing this earlier. The wounds are in a very advanced state of infection and now surgery is going to be necessary. The cleaning of the wounds will be extensive but hopefully not expensive. Even if it is expensive we will still perform it and thankfully the Bangkok Krabi Animal Hospital has been a supporter of ours for a very long time and never charge us for any of their services, only the cost of the materials used. For this we are eternally grateful.
Daan is in no immediate danger anymore thanks to someone discovering him in a toilet in the past few days. He is now in the care of the veterinarian and I am just happy that Daan decided to hide in the public toilet instead of hiding away somewhere in the jungle. Animals, and especially dogs have a tendency to isolate themselves when they are very sick and this might be some sort of genetic thing for the protection of the "pack" even when there is no pack in Daan's life.
He will recover, but just le this be a warning to anyone out there that sees a dog with a wound that it cannot lick. That wound will almost certainly become infected and infested in a stray and if you can, please notify someone to help. There are organizations like our own all over the world and if you just let them know, chances are they will jump into action just like we did when we were told about Daan.
if you would like to see how you can help out or simply spread the word, please visit our website at
http://krabianimalwelfare.org
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