A lot of patience required when trapping a dog in need of help

We get reports every now and then from villagers talking about a lone dog that is wandering around that seems to be injured but will not let anyone get close to it. They are rightfully afraid to try to much to approach these dogs and I once again want to remind people that it is almost never a good idea to approach a dog that you do not know, especially if it is in the wild. These animals have likely gone through a very different life than you remember from your household pets and even if you didn't mean any harm, they can lash out at you and hurt you badly in the process. They are likely just acting out of fear and not any real malice. If you do notice a sick dog or hungry dog, it is a good idea to just leave some food for it, or if it seems like it is in trouble, contact some organization like our own that is near you. There are tens of thousands of animal-welfare organizations around the world that are skilled in handling situations like this and our sole purpose for being is to help these animals.

Sometimes it can take multiple days to get a dog some help, which was the case with this poor girl in the past week.

In this situation we were having difficulty just finding her because the neighbors didn't know exactly where she lives but sure enough, when we did see her she was clearly limping and needed help. She wasn't having any of our usual tactics of luring her in with snacks though because if she could see or smell any of us, she wouldn't come near.

We decided to bring in one of our traps and keep our fingers crossed that she would take the bait of succulent food inside.

The problem with these custom-made traps is that while they do have pressure plates in them to automatically close the door behind them they don't always work because most dogs are very timid and will very gracefully approach food kind of as if they can sense that it is a trap. In this situation the dog would have been correct. If you look closely above the dog must actually step on the pressure plate with enough weight to trigger the automatically closing door behind them and it isn't a "hair trigger," the weight must be substantial enough to hit the triggering mechanism that will automatically close and lock the gate behind them.

I am sure that this causes some stress to the animal if they are left alone in there for a long time, to the point where they may even injure themselves further by being trapped and frantically trying to get out. Therefore, when we use these traps we will always leave someone out there to monitor when the gate has closed. In organizations that have far more funding than ours do, they have technology that is far more sensitive and easier to use than our homemade ones and also it would send them an alert to let them know the trap has been sprung. We do not have those sorts of resources and need to be considerably more hands on.

On the second day of attempting this we were delighted that we heard the "clack!" of the gate closing and thankfully it was the dog we were looking for. Of course she was quite unnerved by us being there so we kept our distance and tried to make her as much at ease as possible.

I think that after a bit she started to realize that we were definitely not there to harm her. A little bit of chicken goes a long way.

We still needed to lure her into a transport kennel because the bottom of the trap is not equipped with a sturdy floor and this agitates the dogs even more and can result in injury to us as well as the dog. It took some coaxing and some chicken, but we were able to get her into the other cage and transported.

We were eventually able to get her into the transport crate and you can kind of see in this picture that she has some sort of growth, probably cancerous, underneath her body close to one of her legs. This is why we were picking her up... to help her...

She may not understand this now or ever, but the only reason why we are putting her through all this torment is in the hopes of extending not just the length of her life, but also the quality of it. There will be more to come on this nameless dog in the future.

if you would like to see how you can help out or simply spread the word, please visit our website at

http://krabianimalwelfare.org

_{Krabi Animal Welfare is a charity run entirely by volunteers and are a registered non-profit organization in Thailand and the U.K.. We aim to relieve the pain and suffering of dogs and cats within Krabi Province.}

เป็นผู้สนับสนุนรายเดือนหรือบริจาคครั้งเดียวได้ที่:

http://krabianimalwelfare.org