Spay & Neuter programs
When Lanta Animal Welfare started in 2005 our goal was to stop the suffering of the homeless, abused and injured stray animals on Koh Lanta. We believe that spaying and neutering is the only humane and truly efficient way of reducing the number of unwanted dogs and cats in the long run.
The locals have their own methods of population control. Often these are incredibly cruel ones, such as putting fish hooks in their food, poisoning, throwing boiling oil on them, or drowning. Sometimes puppies and kittens are left on the main road to be run over or left on a cliff in the sea as the high tide is coming in.
Some of the methods can be explained by the fact that Thailand is a Buddhist country. The Buddhist way is to cherish all life, never to take one. A contradiction in terms then to feed puppies poison? No, because death would then happen to them, not be inflicted upon them. They would choose to eat the poisoned food themselves, they would have accidents on the road and the sea takes all living things in a natural way if it happens to be there. Nobody is responsible, these things happen. By the same logic many Buddhists will be against euthanasia.
On Koh Lanta there is a majority of muslim inhabitants. They consider dogs pests, in much the same way we see rats as dirt and disease carrying animals. We believe that many of the animals that come in with gun shot or knife wounds, and/or with severe burns have been subject to the muslim way of cleaning up.
So we don’t only take care of the animals but we also inform and educate people of the better alternative to all these cruel methods: spaying and neutering. As of June 2011 we have sterilized more than 2500 animals. We will euthanize a suffering stray animal, though only if it has absolutely no chance of recovering from its injuries. With owned animals it depend on the owners consent, whatever the state of the animal.
We think it is of utter importance that people choose to sterilize instead of killing and/or injuring animals, their own or strays. For this reason we keep the prices for these procedures at the clinic very low. Our costs are still the same though. We still need to pay the vet. We need food and medicine for the animals, medical equipment, gas for the car etc…
We depend on donations to keep up our good work, so please support us!
