Teaching students to care for Street Dogs in Goa, India
I’m currently in India at a veterinary centre and neutering clinic. It’s run by the Worldwide Veterinary Service, a UK charity who have outreach projects all over the world. They work with all sorts of animals including dogs and cats; working donkeys and horses and wildlife.
Here at WVS Hicks ITC in Goa, they have a sterilisation scheme for street dogs and dogs who are privately owned by low income families. The male dogs are castrated, and the female dogs are spayed, so there is no risk of unwanted puppies. Some of the operations are performed by their own resident vets, others by visiting vet volunteers and vet students on a training programme. They also run a clinic at the same premises treating health problems for the animals of those low-income families.
I spent last week working in the surgical theatre performing neuters and more complex surgeries. I learned a new castration technique from the vets there and in return I taught them how to place an indwelling tube to flush a dog’s nasal sinuses. An Indian vet, American vet and I all worked together on exploratory surgery in a seriously ill German Shepherd Dog. It was great to pool our knowledge and resources and feel we really were giving the dog the best possible chance.
This week I have been working as a supervisor on the teaching programme. We have eight veterinary students here from the UK and Denmark. They are in their final two years of study or have just qualified ready to start work in the next few weeks. I’m here as a volunteer, helping to teach, along with two Americans; a veterinary surgeon and a qualified veterinary nurse.
The WVS runs the two-week training here for forty-eight weeks of the year. Most of the training is for Indian or Asian students or veterinarians, but they have international fortnights like this on ten occasions each year. The students receive hands-on training in surgery of both female dogs and male dogs, along with learning other practical skills such as inducing and monitoring anaesthesia, placing intravenous catheters and endotracheal tubes and assessing animals and their surgical wounds post-operatively.
Students alternate between performing surgery and monitoring anaesthesia for each other. They have a demonstration of each type of surgery and are then supervised as they hone their skills. Each pair is under continual supervision of a qualified veterinary surgeon; either one of the centre’s resident vets or a volunteer (from India or overseas). This means it’s a great environment in which to teach as everything is far less rushed than in a normal, busy private veterinary practice in the UK. I hope it also means that it’s more relaxed and less stressful for the students as well. As the vets as hands-on supervising and are scrubbed up and ready to assist, it means the quality of care for the dogs is not compromised either.
Before the course starts the students have an introductory assessment to discern their level of knowledge. There are lectures on throughout the course on subjects such as responsible use of antibiotics, euthanasia and ethics, fluid therapy, and rabies. The students take a final assessment at the end to monitor their learning progress. By the time the course finishes they will have performed at least sixteen surgeries, eight on male dogs and eight on females. This far more than I had done when I left vet school and should give them great practical skills, ready for when they start work as new graduates.
The clinic focuses on neutering the huge, free-roaming street-dog population in Goa. Every morning and afternoon a team goes out to a different area to catch these semi-wild dogs. This generally has to be done with catch nets, where the dog is scooped up into a net, which is then twisted to confine it in a humane, non-painful way. As dogs need to be fasted before anaesthesia, those who are caught in the morning are operated on in the afternoon and dogs who are caught in the afternoon have surgery the next day.
All these dogs receive painkillers at the time of their surgery and they are given antibiotics if required. They stay in overnight so that the surgical wound can be assessed, and extra painkillers given the next day. If the wound is healing well and is not sore on the day after surgery, then they are released back to the same location as where they were picked up. The place where each dog was caught is recorded to ensure that they are returned to their own territory. This reduces fighting and the danger of injuries after dogs are released.
All dogs who have surgery are vaccinated against rabies and their ear is nicked, so that it is easy to tell from a distance whether a dog has been sterilised or not. This means that if dogs are caught at a later date then they can be released without undergoing a second, unnecessary operation. If there are any complications, the dog will stay in the kennels for longer, although the intention is to release them as soon as possible. If the dogs are found to have any other illnesses, they are kept hospitalised for longer so that these other conditions can be treated.
Cats are also spayed and castrated here at WVS Hicks. They receive painkillers during and after surgery and are also vaccinated against rabies. If they are feral and do not have an owner to keep an eye on them, they stay in overnight, and their wounds are assessed before being released the following day.
Animals which have owners are treated slightly differently from the street dogs and stray cats. Owned animals stay with their owner whilst their sedation takes effect and are given back to their owners as they wake up from anaesthesia. It’s not unusual to have a line of people sitting in the open air under a corrugated iron roof, with dogs and cats which are either sedated or just coming around. That’s certainly not a common sight in UK veterinary practices, where we tend to hospitalise dogs and cats until they are fully recovered from their anaesthetic. As it’s monsoon season here, this wait is often to the accompaniment of the sounds of torrential rain!
The clinic is understandably basic, but they take things like sterility and humane treatment of animals very seriously. They do the best they can with the resources they have available and manage to maintain a high standard of surgery. The staff certainly have a very can-do attitude and do their best to help all the animals who arrive at their door.
In 2018 the programme here at WVS Hicks ITC sterilised and vaccinated 6256 dogs and 881 cats. This site in Goa and the other WVS India centre in Ooty trained 321 veterinarians in the same year. This will make a huge difference to the lives of dogs in India and beyond. The clinic aims to sterilise at least thirty animals every day, Monday to Friday. The students neutered 128 dogs between them in the time they were there; a fantastic contribution. However, since there are thought to be over 140,000 dogs in Goa, it’s going to take some time to get the population under control. In 2019 WVS Hicks is aiming to sterilise 12,000 animals; a hugely ambitious target.
The sterilisation scheme helps reduce the incidence of rabies, by vaccinating and reduced fighting in neutered dogs. Dog bite wounds are a common way for rabies to spread from dog to dog, so if you make males less aggressive by castration and prevent females coming into season, there are fewer fights and therefore fewer cases of rabies. Human health is improved by reducing the risk of rabies transmission to people and dog bites from uncontrolled street dogs. The nuisance to people of street dogs is reduced, leading to better human-animal relations. Many puppies and kittens born in this environment are unwanted and die before they are a year old, so the suffering of these animals is prevented too. It’s a welfare scheme which is making a real, practical difference in a place where it is desperately needed.
The work the clinic does is marvellous, and they do make their money go as far as possible, but it still costs 700 rupees, or about £8.25 to catch, sterilise and rabies vaccinate one dog. If you are able to contribute a few pounds, it will make a big difference to what they can do.
If you are a veterinarian, vet nurse or vet student I would consider getting involved in a WVS project somewhere in the world. Whatever your interest or area of expertise, I’m sure there is something you can do to help. Whilst it was definitely a working holiday, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at WVS Hicks. It involves hard work and full days in fairly basic surroundings, but I got a lot out of it. It was great to be part of such a hardworking and enthusiastic team and I enjoyed getting to know the Indian vets, particularly Dr Amulya, Dr Lysander and Khitisija, and Vince and Michael, the American vet and vet tech. I think we all learned something from each other during the two weeks I was there. The students were a fantastic group, who worked very well together and it was great to see how much they learned and progressed during their course.
It was great to visit the front line of veterinary work, where it is really needed and get involved. I’ve been idly scrolling through the WVS website pages, wondering where to go next!
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