A visitor from India.

Another 4 kittens rehomed and 10 years old Tiddlewinks (not my choice of name, honestly) so not a bad day at all.
Today we also had a lovely visitor from India .Renu Rai runs an animal welfare shelter and clinic in Mumbai,India which is called Freshfields and to which this charity is affiliated.One of our volunters Nia has been over there to see the work done for the street dogs of Mumbai and came back very impressed and full of praise for Renu and her team of helpers.I hope to go there myself in the not too distant future.I would love to see India though at the same time would dread seeing the poverty and the starving animals. At least many of these have a daily meal thanks to this very determined lady.400 street dogs are fed every night with a meal of rice and scraps and many are sterilised at the clinic.I think we have it easy in the Uk compared to welfare workers in other countries.Renu is fighting a real battle over there, there is much anti dog feeling and she has few helpers to assist her, someone even broke into her shelter and poisoned the dogs there! I cant begin to imagine how she must have felt and how she feels on a daily basis with so little support from the local council and the public.Pictured with me is Renu and her daughter and grandchild with Dilys our Sunday volunteer whose daughter Nia spent time at the Mumbai shelter.Notice William getting in on the act and Holly one of our resident cats is just behind him, she loves visitors and always follows them about.
Its when I meet people like Renu that I wish I had loads of money,it would be lovely to be able to help her with sterilisation of the local strays. When only so much can be done with such limited funds (she pays for most of it herself)it means there will be so many more mouths to feed in the future. It is incredibly frustrating that there are so many wealthy people in most impoverished countries and so few do anything charitable to help.
Anyway we all had a good chat and compared notes on the different problems in our respective countries and how animal welfare is always so low on the list of any councils/governments.There is always a common bond between those who do rescue work,no matter what we look like we are familiar to one another simply by the strength of our feelings and by shared experiences.It is also good to meet others who share a similar lifestyle which has to be said is quite out of the ordinary.
A little jack russell was brought here and he is being fostered by Vanessa, so far nobody has rung up for him, will this be yet another unclaimed stra? The ridiculous thing is that many of these dogs are found wearing new collars so are not really strays, it seems that they must belong to people who dont care if their dogs return or not from their daily constitutional and do nothing to find them. This terrier even has a name barrel with paper inside but nothing written on it- what is the point of buying one and not filling it in?
So another weekend comes to a close,Mei is doing the last dog walk of the day,I can hear her calling for Bonnie who once again has disappeared but will be found munching at some ill gotten gains.If there is even a sniff of food about, Bonnie will track it down and devour it.Last week she went next door and returned with a box of yoghourts the milkman had left on their step!!!