Why adopt from Thailand?

Almost everyone who has spent time in Thailand has an image of a dog etched in their memories. The dog they passed at the foot of the temple steps with crusty skin, blighted by sores and mange. Or the dog with a grotesquely twisted leg that only gives slight indication of what she must be suffering after being hit by a car. These are images many want to forget. These are the dogs that have no reason to live, yet somehow continue to do so. These are the dogs we want to help.

All dogs, wherever they are born, deserve the chance of a home and a happy life. In Thailand’s capital city of Bangkok an estimated 300,000 dogs live a pitiful, unloved, homeless existence.

The problems they face

• There are no laws to protect animals from abuse, and no government or private agencies where cases of cruelty, neglect or suffering can be reported and appropriate action taken.
• If rounded up, strays are incarcerated in unhygienic and overcrowded pounds where funds and food are often in short supply. Worse things happen too.
• Animal welfare and responsible pet care education to encourage compassion towards stray and owned animals is not part of the national curriculum. Very few school children get any form of humane education.
• It is culturally acceptable for pets to be pushed out on the streets or dumped at temples when they become sick, pregnant or injured, or lose their puppy cuteness.
• Neutering of owned pets is not actively encouraged, nor are there adequate government spay/neuter programmes to cope with the strays.
• Killing by strychnine poisoning remains a shocking reality, whilst religious beliefs reject euthanasia even in the most desperate of cases.
• Dogs are being killed in alarmingly growing numbers for the dog meat industry, their skins used as leather for luxury goods in overseas markets.

For these reasons and more, we believe our efforts to find homes for the strays, in any country of the world that will take them and love them, are justified and worthwhile.

If you are unable to adopt, you might like to sponsor a stray.