One of the highlights of this trip to Bali was to spend time with BAWA’s spay/neuter team in Singapadu in the Gianyar Regency. Singapadu seems like a middle class area relatively untouched by tourism and provided me with one of the most authentic Balinese experiences I’ve ever had.
My driver drops me in the middle of the village just as a dog-catcher expertly traps a wily pet with a practiced twist of his wrist and one seriously sturdy net. Twisting round and round, reducing the struggling dog to a ball of yowling, the loop of the net is laid around the animal, the handle is then removed and threaded through the net, to lift the dog safely into the back of a van.
The Bali Animal Welfare Association working with village heads, regularly visits areas around the island, educating locals on companion animal care and sterilising pets and strays for free, creating a smaller and healthier street dog population.A couple of years ago I was out with the BAWA ambulance as they fed and medicated sick and hungry dogs in pretty Padangbai, a ferry port to some of the smaller islands. I was photographing a dog eating rice on the footpath when a ferry arrived and a whole heap of tourists disembarked and swamped the beach. One of them stopped and asked me if the dog was feral. In Australia a feral dog is wild and dangerous, a threat to livestock and even children. The dog I was photographing at Padangbai probably had no owner and ran with the village pack. He probably also had a street and a house that he called his own and knew every person that lived on that street and barked “stranger danger” at every person that didn’t. I was surprised and saddened to realise that many tourists see street dogs as wild and dangerous when every single one of them just wants to be a companion pet but never had the opportunity.
The reality is that street dogs in all poor communities can be family dogs that have a home and are fed but are allowed to roam the streets unrestricted. They can be neighbourhood dogs that share a street or two in a village, a local calls them a pet but their only food comes from scavenging. Or they can be what the World Health Organisation designates as feral – independent and unrestricted. But in reality urban dogs never quite fall into this category as they still live in a symbiotic relationship with humans and their pack territory often coincides with a village’s border.
BAWA recognises this relationship between pack territories and village borders and uses it to their advantage. Dogs don’t often cross pack or village “borders” so by sterilising one village at a time BAWA can methodically and effectively control dog populations which, in turn, increases dog welfare; less competition for limited resources means more food for individuals; reduced malnourishment decreases the spread of disease and parasites.
Back in Singapadu a field operating theatre has been set up in the village hall – a concrete floor with a traditional Balinese pagoda roof. It’s a public holiday so the local kids have come along to watch the show or bring their dog to be sterilised. Red rope cordons off the “sterile” area around fold-out operating tables. At the top of the step a mat has been laid out with bucket, soap, razors and primitive tattoo punch. The BAWA van backs up to the bottom of the steps, opens the back door and two staff lift out a dog netted so snugly it can only move enough to breath (and not enough to bite).
The vet administers four shots through the net, including pre-meds, vitamins and pain killers. Within minutes the dog is subdued enough to be carefully removed from the net and laid out on the mat where he gets cleaned, shaved and tattooed and then laid out on the operating table. Half an hour later his wound has been stitched and superglued and he is laid out in recovery – a rubber mat surrounded by a temporary plastic green fence.
A Balinese man brings his beat up old junk yard dog to be sterilised. He holds the old dog’s head while the vet nurse injects the pre-med anaesthesia. The dog starts to stagger on the end of his lead and the owner begins counting to ten with all the dramatics of a referee in a boxing match counting down a knockout. To the kids delight the dog is still standing at the end of the countdown but ten minutes later Old Junkyard has curled up and gone to sleep. The owner decides to go home and heads off on his motorbike. Old Junkyard hears the particular growl of his owner’s bike through his pre-med lethargy and realises he’s been left behind. On wobbly legs he sets off after his owner who is in blissful ignorance. Weaving erratically down the road Old Junkyard has an audience of children and adults all howling with laughter as he gets slower and more wobbly the further he goes. Half an hour later, the BAWA van finds him asleep on the side of the road and brings him back to the town hall for a shave, tattoo and the removal of two small pieces of his anatomy.
I’ve been told that western vets are often impressed with the field operating skills of the BAWA staff and so was I. Anaesthesia by injection means there’s no monitor or intubation. Top up is done by sight, watching for little telltale signs like twitching eyes or twitching tongues.A couple of hours later when the dog starts to come around it’s driven back to its home or street, where it’s less likely to be stressed by claustrophobic and unfamiliar surroundings. Also by returning the dog to its home environment, it’s spot in the local pack won’t be replaced by an outside unsterilised dog.
A week or so later, BAWA staff return to the village to do a visual check on, up to 30, post op dogs easily identified by their new red cloth collars. Surprisingly, despite field operating, unhygienic recovery environments and the humidity, post op infection rate is really low. Clearly street dogs have adapted well to their environment and have strong constitutions in spite of parasites, disease and malnourishment.
The team will return again after the next breeding season to repeat the process all over again. The locals now understand the importance of sterilising their dogs, the queue will be longer at the village hall and the dogs will be wilier than ever – they know what’s coming!
Makeshift Collar
