Tree Of Life For Animals

Pauline Mason is one of our regular supporters. She is a Belly Dance teacher and has a bi-annual Haflah.

A Haflah is an evening of music, belly-dance performance and delicious middle eastern food, where much fun is had by all.

Her most recent Haflah has managed to raise £40 for our shelter. Thank you Pauline and all of those who participated in the evening.

That £40 will go straight to the animals in India and ensures we can continue to treat dogs like this one who had to have his leg amputated.

Post-op and much happier

Cute Calf

Now is the time of the Muslim Festival of Urs, where in former years the municipal authorities would take the dogs who lived around the shrine, to the edge of town and stake them out to die of hunger and dehydration - a painful and appalling death.

The Tree of Life for Animals has convinced the authorities there is a better way. During this Festival we will round up 250 dogs and take them to the Clinic. There they will be vaccinated against rabies and neutered. Neutering really does bring the dogs happier and healthier lives.

Just some of the dogs collected during the Urs festival 2006

This means no more dog fighting, which makes the locals fearful. No more trans-venereal tumours and of course we reduce the numbers of street dogs. Another benefit is that we get to vaccinate the dogs against Rabies, with the hope that we will eliminate this horrible disease in animals and humans in the area.

We are currently in full swing and working over 18 hour days to get through the workload, but it is so worth it. A week later, after the Festival is over, the dogs will be released to live life with renewed vigour.

We are close to signing an agreement with the Rajasthan government who have agreed to pay for 50% of a new 60 dog kennel block. This will enable us to continue and extend our Animal Birth Control programme.

Serena, our current Project Raja volunteer has taken it upon herself to find the other 50% of building costs for the kennels - what a trooper!

There are also talks that will mean the government will fund us to rescue and neuter 20 dogs a day from September 2007, with this long term strategy we hope to have a 70% reduction in the street dog population within 3-5 years. The new kennel block will enable us to do this without compromising our Rescue and Care Project.

The Hydroactive Womens Challenge takes place again this year on Sunday 16th September. It is a 5km Womens Only event aimed at raising money for all sorts of worthwhile charities. You can walk, run, skip or salsa your way around the course in any get-up you fancy - it’s all for charity!

We had 17 ladies participate last year, 15 in London’s Hyde Park and 2 in Sefton Park, Liverpool. Everyone had a great day out and we raised lots of money for the Tree of Life for Animals hospital in India.

Pauline and Kim after completing the 2006 Liverpool Womens Challenge

Read about the Womens Challenge 2006.

It costs £15 to enter of which £5 will go directly to us. The rest is raised through sponsorship.

If you would like to take part in this event and get a lovely group of ladies to join you or sponsor you then please email fundraising@tolfa.org.uk and we will send you out a sponsorship form and more details.

Dr Irschad and the new water bore

Since we officially opened our doors in October 2005 we have been relying on water being delivered on a weekly basis. Not so much of an issue during Monsoon season, but for the remaining 10 months of the year we would have the water truck arrive to pump water from its tank, into our tank sitting on the hospital roof - a very noisy affair. We always had to be extra careful not to run out before our next delivery.

(more…)

June 2007 saw the start of our Project Raja Volunteer Scheme. This is a new venture for us, but it seems to be proving popular, particularly amongst veterinary students.

Justin and Laura were our very first veterinary students to join us for a month and by all accounts they fitted in with the TOLFA team extremely well. The problem of their bags being in London whilst they were en-route to India and coping with the extreme heat didn’t put them off.

We are looking forward to the return of our ‘volunteer guinea pigs’ in the UK to find out how they got on.

Volunteers Eilidh and Serena are the new members of our team. We wish them all the best and hope they enjoy their experience with us.

Serena with one of her flock

Monsoon season is the only time Rajasthan gets any rain and it is lovely to see everything lush and green for 2 months of the year. It means that we can grow lovely fresh grass for our cattle and the trees we plant will grow quickly and provide us with some shade later in the year. For the remaining 10 months everything dries out again and we are back to being a desert land.

Monsoon season in 2006

So the Monsoon season is well and truly upon us here in India. The rains this year have started on time for a change but they have come with a vengeance.

We have had more rain in the past couple of days than we had the whole of Monsoon season last year! The torrential rain is proving to be a real problem as we have been experiencing leaks in our small and large animal operating theatres as well as finding our lovely new cattle shade under 1 foot of rainwater.

All hands on deck as we try to repair the damage and bail out as much water as we can!

After Monsoon season, everything dries up until next year

Lots of good news to report this month.Despite it being extremely hot over here at the minute - about 45 degrees - things are ticking along nicely. The last few days we have begun to notice the start of the monsoon rains actually on time for a change! We are just getting ready to plant all the trees this year in time for the rain, so they will hopefully grow very quickly.We have just recently been awarded WSPA member society status which is fantastic news. Being a member of the society means that they approve the work that we are doing in the fields of animal welfare and we will have access to a lot of extra support and resources.More good news is that we now have our own running water via our water bore which saves us having to rely on tankered water.Many thanks to Kym, our long term volunteer, who had a whip round of all her friends in the UK and raised all the funds to enable us to connect the pipes to the main hospital. She unfortunately left last week after about 4 months in total and will be greatly missed as she was a fantastic help in so many ways. However I know that she will stay involved from wherever she is.Our small cattle shade was destroyed in February but has now been repaired. The new and improved version should hopefully withstand the monsoon and any other storms we may get.The first Project Raja volunteers have been here for 3 weeks now and they have settled in amazingly. They have been a great help and really got stuck and become part of the team. Read more about our Project Raja Volunteer Scheme.We are fairly quiet on rescues at the moment but next month will be the start of maggot season so we are getting prepared for an increase in our workload - we will need all hands on deck!Until next month…Rachel Wright