Teaching some locals about the importance of dog skin care
There are a lot of dogs wandering around Thailand with horrible skin problems. This is probably similar elsewhere in the developing world, but I only live here so I can't say for sure.
Often, the people who are looking after these dogs or taking care of them to some degree are concerned, but there is a general lack of knowledge about what this problem is, and how it can be treated. Also, most people don't know that it costs almost nothing to treat this and many other skin problems that dogs, especially homeless dogs, commonly end up with.
When we find a dog, particularly a pup, with the beginning stages of mange, I feel as though a lot of the locals aren't going to do anything about it probably until it is already too late. So we went out with a mission to accomplish many things with these dogs, but the main thing was to get the kids involved so they can see how easy it is.
We don't expect the kids to have veterinarian levels of knowledge, but it is kind of interesting to send them home with more knowledge that perhaps anyone else in the small village where they live.
Generally speaking Thai people and especially Thai families that live in the "bush" are very kind towards animals but much like my own father when he was a kid they have an attitude of the dogs and cats being semi-working animals and lavish expenses are not part of the deal.
This is why letting them know how little these generic medications cost is really important. And by the way we were NOT tying to sell anything to little kids or their parents. This was all promotional only in the sense of letting them know a thing or two and letting them know we are there to help if they ever need us.
Demonstrating how the medicine can be mixed up with wet food of any kind and absorbed into the sauce of even their leftover home curry was kind of enlightening to the kids because they rightfully assume that all medicine tastes terrible and no god is going to eat it. That isn't necessarily true with the oral medications for dogs. Most of these are designed to taste good and in my experience of handing out hundreds, maybe thousands of doses over the past decade, most of the dogs gobble it down right away.
Brand names are mostly irrelevant. Active ingredients such as Afoxolaner, fluralaner, sarolaner, and lotilaner (perhaps anything ending in "laner") is the sort of meds that is going to clear up most external parasites and many of the internal ones.
More back to the point though, these dogs were the local pups that were in these kids' villages and they are now going to report back to us about the progress of the skin of the dog. I bet that once they see how amazing these products can be that this is probably the best sort of "advertising" that we could possibly do.
We aren't trying to recruit these kids, we are just realizing that one of the main ways forward is via education since the kids are the future. Many of the adults are too far gone to reeducate and they kind of take it personally or patronizing if we attempt to do that. Kids' brains are a blank slate and they are much more willing to listen to something especially if they can see the results with their own eyes.
It was a fun weekend and I think the kids liked it too. Now the dogs are going to have a better skin condition and that is what I would call a win/win/win!
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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