For The Love of Animals

Preface: This is going to be long. 

Today a flame I always had burning in my heart turned into a wildfire. Everyone who knows me knows I am passionate about animals. If you are an animal person you know what I mean. If you are not I will never understand why but you may want to skip this post.

So in past posts you have read about my anger towards the animal abuse in Fiji and about the sadness I experience with animals on a daily basis. It is the one thing that brings tears to my eyes on a repeated basis. Now let's move on.

Today I was able to go I SPCA, which would be similar to an animal shelter. I was so confused about how or why they had an animal shelter and when I got there I was able to talk with Pricilla and learn so much. The fire began to grow.

I had so many questions about the ways the animals were treated and why and how is nothing being done! So let's talk about some of the things I learned. 

Pricilla first gave us some background information on why animals are the way they are here. Fiji has a very high cost of living but most of the people here live under the poverty line. They barely have enough food to feed themselves let alone animals. The government has no program for cats and dogs because they are not livestock and the government is focused on food. People get dogs to use as guard dogs especially in high theft areas. We then learned that people do not spay and neuter their animals because of two reasons. 1. They cannot afford to. But even when SPCA will do it for free or when they offer free clinics people still don't come. This leads to reason 2. People believe that spay and neuter removes the sexual organs and then the dogs cannot mate. Seeing as how many here do not believe in contraceptives they think that spaying and neutering is bad. 

So now we have a Bagillion dogs that have 3 litters of puppies a year and this exponential amount of dogs continues to grow and be an increasing problem. 

Let's go deeper. The government isonly concerned   with removing stray dogs in order to keep the streets and children safer. They use to round them up and shoot them or poison then but that is no longer allowed. They do not have the manpower nor money to collect them and euthanize them. So we have a never ending issue here.

Now let's talk about the animal cruelty that enrages me! People get a dog to have a guard dog. They tie these dogs up and keep them constrained to make them mad. It was even said that they will feed them chili pepper.

Some people believe that animals can feed themselves while living in their yards.   

She had a neighbor who believes this and the dogs starve. The females have puppies. The puppies all die and then the dogs eat the puppies to stay alive. 

People do not have money I care for the puppies and they don't want to drop them off anywhere because 1. SPCA is only in suva and Nadi and 2. They don't have transportation or money and they don't care. Last week someone put a litter of puppies in a pillow case and threw them onto the side of the road. The puppies were found and brought to SPCA with their umbilical cords still attached. 3 died of injuries from the toss. Puppies that are found are usually put to sleep because they cannot keep them alive and do not have food for the puppies. 

We learned that in the high theft areas three cases a day of dogs who are poisoned are brought in but they usually die because the poison has taken course. These are the guard dogs but when the thieves come they poison the dogs. 

One time a man called because his dog broke his leg on Friday. He called Sunday and asked to bring the dog in he next day. They offered to go get the dog right then to treat it and he denied. 

It's so messed up. It took every ounce of me I hold myself together as I was hearing all this. It makes me so angry. I get so frustrated. 

So then SPCA tried to help the few people who bring their animals in. But here is he problem. They have to have a vet present for things that require anesthesia and other things but there is no vet. The nurses know how to treat the animals but are not allowed to so he animals sits there or gets put to sleep. Sometimes they can get a livestock vet to come supervise. Another problem many cases are hit and run but with no x ray machine they can't fully help these animals. 

There are so many issues. How do you educate an entire nation? How do change the hearts of the people? How can you tackle an issue this intense? 

Well you start small. Pricilla is working on outreach clinics where she goes out and does free spay and neutering. She has volunteer vets who can come for three weeks but they have to teach the people about spay and neutering or capture the strays. But she is on the right path. She is impassioned and full of desire that radiates from her. 

So how can we help? It always comes back to money doesn't it but seriously. They need money to get these clinics going and I know we can help. If you could see this you would feel the passion. So Nikki and I are currently researching the best way to collect donations and get them here to Fiji so they can be used to begin a change. Everyone has to start somewhere no matter how small.