Our Volunteers - Chris and Laura
We have such fond memories of India and there’s no doubt that this experience will help us, firstly to find a job and secondly to start it confidently.
There’s so much to be gained from doing a project like this, whether you are from a veterinary or non-veterinary background, and it is amazing to live and work in a place like India. A big thanks to everyone at TOLFA for an incredible experience, and we hope to visit them again in the future.
Chris, Laura and the TOLFA team
Our TOLFA Experience
The end of vet school was looming, and while wondering what we were going to do after graduating in July we received an email through college telling us about an Indian animal charity asking for volunteers. That was the first time we had heard about TOLFA, and after emailing to find out a bit more we soon found ourselves booked to visit India and work for 3 weeks in late August.
We spent the next few months preparing for our final exams as well as fundraising the joint £1000 donation to take with us to TOLFA. With exams passed and money raised we were very excited about setting off and what the trip would entail.
After an 8 hour flight and 8 hour (interesting!) taxi ride from Delhi, we finally reached Pushkar and were dropped off at our home-to-be for the next 3 weeks, the Paramount Palace Hotel. A very dry monsoon season this year meant the lake in Pushkar was rather lacking in water, but nonetheless the hotel’s many balconies and rooftop restaurant offered spectacular views over the town and surrounding mountains.
We were greeted warmly by Serena, a UK trustee for TOLFA, who gave us useful information about the charity and local life in Pushkar. The first full day was spent recovering from jetlag and exploring the local area for ourselves. Everything you need in Pushkar is nearby, and it was immediately obvious just how cheap the cost of living was going to be compared to the UK, on average only costing around 80 rupees (£1) for a generous meal and drinks!
The atmosphere, full of the colourful Hindu culture combined with the bustling, dusty streets and bazaars, was like nowhere else we had ever been before. Not to mention the many dogs, cattle, goats and monkeys seen in every direction you looked!
The volunteers are organized with an overlap of a few days so that the ‘old hands’ can help the new volunteers to learn the ropes before they leave. The next morning we had a quick induction in using the scooters and rode off to the hospital for the first time.
The journey to TOLFA is along a beautiful quiet pass through the mountains between Pushkar and Ajmer, and the only traffic you encounter along the way is goat and cattle herds – which is good when you’re a novice scooter rider! After arriving we were introduced to the many compounders working at the shelter and started getting to grips with everyone’s names!
Laura assisting with our ABC programme
It was great to finally be putting 5 years of hard work into practice. Daily duties involved surgery as part of the ABC (animal birth control) program, carrying out both dog and large animal treatments, and monitoring anaesthetics. We rotated between these tasks on a daily basis.
Many of the dogs required daily wound management for infected cuts, bites, and surgical sites, and other patients were suffering from fractures, malnutrition, tumours, and mange. Some inpatients unfortunately cannot be released, either due to paralysis of their hind limbs, amputation or to persistent symptoms of distemper. The aftermath of this viral disease can cause the muscles to twitch and the dogs can appear to behave strangely, which the local people could misinterpret as rabies. So these ‘bobbing’ dogs are given names and become permanent happy residents of TOLFA.
The two vets working at the charity, Dr Sachin and Dr Ashok, are fantastic. It was amazing to think that Dr Sachin had only graduated a matter of months before us but was so knowledgeable about everything, and very adept at performing flank bitch spays through tiny incisions!
Lunch would always be cooked by Sharda, a lovely lady who works tirelessly for TOLFA and her family. She has a husband and 4 children, who all sleep in one room, have one bathroom and one cooking area, and that’s it. Nonetheless our dal and chapatti would be there waiting for us every day, along with the dogs hoping for our leftovers! Before starting the afternoon we would drink chai, a very sweet, spiced local tea, with the compounders. The day would finish with us walking the dogs out around the compound and feeding them up with Parle-G biscuits, as some were in serious need of a good meal.
A 6 week old puppy, named Hamish, that was found on the streets when only a few days old had been looked after by previous volunteers. He couldn’t be looked after at TOLFA as he wasn’t old enough to be vaccinated yet, and so the volunteers before us had been feeding him milk through the night until he was old enough for weaning. Luckily when we acquired him he was onto solid food; he stayed in our hotel room and behaved how all puppies do, with mad excitement, clumsiness and curiosity!
Chris helps handrear Hamish the pup
Some days we took him with us on our scooters to the shelter as he was getting very noisy and disturbing other guests in the hotel. Hamish was a great little guy to have around and even though he nearly fell down the stairs and almost got taken by monkeys he stayed out of mischief and after his puppy vaccinations was allowed to stay at TOLFA with the other puppies.
Throughout the next 3 weeks we developed a new found respect for the amazing resilience shown by animals in the face of severe disease and suffering, and have learnt not to give up hope too easily on critically ill patients. Wild animals were brought in by the rescue vehicle after receiving calls from local people about their injuries.
One particular day, a magnificent looking large blue antelope called a nilgai came in after being hit by a truck, suffering from a head tilt with epistaxis (blood running from the nose) and minor scratches. We administered anti-inflammatories and let it wander in the large animal paddock for a few days to gather its strength, staying well away as this was a big male with sharp horns. We were all happy to see it safely released back into the wild 3 days later as it was getting too dangerous for us to go in the large animal paddock!
The unusual variety of animals we saw come through TOLFA was very interesting, and included a peacock with diarrhoea, two monkeys with dog bites, a rabbit and water buffalo to mention a few.
You cannot talk about a trip to India without mention of the infamous “Delhi belly” as the high standards of hygiene we are used to in Europe leaves us rather vunerable to picking up bugs when in India. We were rather unlucky and both of us were struck down with a more serious form of gastroenteritis, having to endure a short stay in hospital while we recovered.
However it wasn’t as bad as it sounds – Dr. Gupta, who deals with sick travellers on a daily basis, was fantastic and our stay in hospital with cable TV and air conditioning was rather luxurious compared to the Paramount! We felt so welcomed by everyone at the charity, and received daily visits from staff members who found it very interesting that we were in the hospital and wanted to check up on how we were!
On the last day of our stay we bought the staff a large bottle of Sprite and a box of chocolate éclairs to share between them. The chocolates only lasted 5 minutes! We said our goodbyes before setting off home to the hotel, enjoying every last minute of the ride back as it would be our last.
Chris and Laura
Project Raja Volunteers