Motherless Tinies at Deonar

All three of these pups came to Deonar because they had lost their mothers. The white and the snoozing cream pup are siblings found at a construction site beside their mother who had died for want of food. This probably happened because of their location. Not much to eat on a construction site, poor thing. After the pups were brought to our Centre, the little white, seen above, and standing by himself on a bench, got adopted and is doing well.
The little cream coloured pup, as beautiful as she was, remained unwell for some time and then we lost her.
This handsome brown pup is now in foster care, thankfully, and is waiting for one of you to adopt him. Don't forget - the decision to adopt an Indian dog, will be one of the wisest you ever made. They have been around for thousands of years, are real survivors and need now to be appreciated, cared for and nurtured by all of us who realize how valuable each of these animals really is.

Meet Our Animals : IDA Event on 9th October

We do such a variety of work at IDA Deonar with different animals, that we thought we would invite the public in on Sunday 9th October to showcase some of that work. In the first pic you can see a couple of our smallest patients. These two were born on a construction site and lost their mother. One of them has been adopted a week after this function was held and is in a safe loving home - our ultimate goal for all our little ones. Other infants come in because of broken limbs, bites, paralysis and other sad afflictions. We are happy to say that most of them reach that happily running around the puppy pen stage, even if they don't get adopted.
The rest of our work covers firstly the ABC operations of about 800 stray dogs a month. Mrs. Patkar, spoke about this major field of work for which the Centre exists. Besides this, we care for about 30 blind and handicapped dogs, our maggot wound dogs - the gladiators of the dog world who have to spend about 2 to 3 months with us until they are fully healed, accident cases, abandoned dogs, and finally our resident dogs - about 80 of them and resident cats.
In the picture below, you can see our Chief Guest, Inspector Chaudhary of Deonar Police Station handing over a gift and commendation letter to one of our Best Volunteers of 2011, Ms Manisha Nanda, who works tirelessly for all types of animals.
The second person to get this award was Ms Madhu Roy. What would we do without these wonderful volunteers?
Another honoured guest was Advocate Ashok Shahani who is always there to guide us in legal matters and is one of our staunch supporters. Will post a few pics later of the other guests and our "demo" dogs and cat and also our great audience who hopefully enjoyed themselves.

Milo and Emma - Birthday Fosters!

Milo is this lovely brown fluffy chap and Emma is the smooth white little female. A group of friends had the brilliant idea of taking them into foster care over the week-end as a birthday gift for their dear friend, who just loves animals but can't keep any pets at present. We were all for it, as a small holiday away from the puppy pen is not bad at all for our little ones. It really helps to socialize them, they have the lovely experience of being a in a real home and the fortunate ones who opt to take them home have a very nice time also.

The birthday gift was really appreciated and our two sweet pups had a rollicking time with the birthday girl and her friends. In fact, they got their names at this time.
Spent most of their time, eating, sleeping in the greatest comfort, playing with the toys provided and running about the house. This was one birthday gift that was enjoyed by all, the pups included.

Just a footnote: A few days after they returned to the Centre, Milo got adopted. He is now with a kind family, enjoying himself in his new home. Emma was not so fortunate, but we lavish as much care and love on all our little ones at Deonar, as we can so she also is comfortable and happy.

IDA India Campaign for Mumbai Captive Elephants

What a disgraceful picture this is. One of the most precious animals in India, declared by the Central Government to be India's Heritage animal, can be seen very often in this most ludicrous of environments - in the middle of the heavy traffic in the mega city of Mumbai. This animal is forced to walk on concrete roads, in all kinds of weather, resulting in terrible injury to the soft foot pads, ankles and legs.

One wonders where those people are who consider the elephant so sacred? They are quite gullible in their outlook - mahouts have a field day during the festival of Ganpati, when superstitious devotees give out alms on simply spotting an elephant on the road. This magnificent animal has been reduced to an instrument of begging.

In 2007, a ban was instituted. Elephants were banned from plying the roads of Mumbai and Navi Mumbai. The owners and mahouts are not concerned. The animal is too large it seems for even forest officials to handle. No plans at all have been put into place to rehabilitate any elephant that is rescued from an 'Owner" who has no papers of ownership. Some elephants did disappear from the city after the ban, but they must be in as bad a condition as the city based elephants, with not enough daily water and fodder, suitable shelter (in the city, this does not exist), or rest. They are forced to ply the roads daily begging for alms and food.

In 2007, concrete plans were made for an Elephant Rescue Centre near Kolhapur. Everything was in place, and then suddenly, the plan was put on the back burner.
IDA India intends to work to open up this project again and try to get a refuge for the captive begging elephants in Maharashtra. We are starting an online petition, details of which will be posted shortly. Do join us in making every effort to help these animals, subjected to a bleak and tortured life in the city, for no fault of their own.