Animal Shelter Update

Today visited the Animal Shelter to pick up some skin cream for one of my dogs. As always visiting the Shelter is a real pleasure and whilst there caught up with the latest news. As always lots of playful puppies and young dogs, gayly making mischief wherever possible, in this case right underneath a medicine cart - whoops!

Of course I wanted to find out about Baby, the little female monkey orphan that was savaged by some dogs. Happily her wounds are almost healed and she is beginning to be brighter and more interested in whats going on around her.

In the below photograph, the Animal Shelters two highly dedicated vets, Dr. Raju on the left and Dr. Pushpa (in the white jacked) on the right. With tiny Baby in the centre.

Baby is learning how to behave like a monkey and in the next photo plays his favourite game of hanging on to his pretend tree (Dr. Raju).

The next photograph is of a peacock currently receiving treatment at the Animal Shelter. The peacock is an inmate of the Suddhananda Ashram on the northside of Arunachala, where he permanently lives with a colony of four other peacocks.

The poor little fellow got savaged on his rear end by a stray dog. Lets hope that Ashram takes better precautions in the future to protect their beautiful birds.

Before leaving the Animal Shelter wanted to find out about their resident monkey, of whom I have written several earlier postings, here and here. Well apparently the naughty, highly intelligent scamp was able to untie the string fastening of his cage, and made a break for it in the early morning about four days ago. Monkey ended up at the Animal Shelter as a result of an attack by a band of dogs. As the monkey is old and toothless he wasn't able to defend himself and thanks to the intervention of some locals with stout sticks, the dogs were pushed back and the monkey rescued.



For the past two months, the Animal Shelter have been trying to find a happy new environment for the monkey, but due to a series of unfortunate coincidences was unable to ensure a suitable relocation. Word has it that one of the Animal Shelter staff saw monkey in a tree a couple of days ago, so we keep our fingers crossed that the call of freedom ends happily for the dear old-timer and his remaining years are spent munching mangoes high up in the safety of the trees, and far away from bad tempered stray dogs.



Happy to report that the Animal Shelter now have their own website at this link. So please bookmark their site and keep checking with them on their reports of the excellent work they are engaged in, throughout Tiruvannamalai.


In addition in the upcoming Arunachala Grace News, April 2008, we will be having an indepth report from Leslie Robinson, the founder of the Animal Shelter. If you do not yet receive your monthly copy of the Newsletter direct to your email inbox, please check the facility at the left column of this page, to become a free subscriber.