While we focus a lot of our efforts at Krabi's largest and most famous temple. The Tiger Cave Temple is not the only temple that we look after, it is just the only one that people are most likely to have heard of since it is a very popular tourist destination. With more than 100 dogs living there it is something the requires a great deal of care but we do also visit the much smaller and less visited temples as well because all temples in Thailand are unfortunately popular places for people to drop off their unwanted pets.
We have to be a bit more careful at these smaller temples because we don't visit them often enough for the dogs to really know who we are. While I will get up close and personal with most of the dogs at the Tiger Cave Temple I tend to keep my distance and drop the food, not hand it, to the dogs at the other temples that we look after. We are able to look after the more remote temples because the monks stay in touch with us and let us know if new pups have been abandoned there so that we can come and intervene before it becomes a problem. They also will let us know if they are running out of food.
Something you might not know about temples in Thailand is that all the supplies that the monks live off of - as well as share with the animals that live there - have to be provided by the people that are patrons of that temple. As far as I know there is no centralized "command" to speak of the likes of which we would see in the Catholic church. So if people are not donating items to the monks the monks struggle to eat food of their own, let alone have enough to share with the dogs that live there.
In situations like this we will come by and drop off massive bags of dog food for them and for me and most of the staff at Krabi Animal Welfare, we are just so happy that the monks care enough to monitor the situation as well as they do. Our operation is small and is staffed almost entirely by volunteers so we can't be everywhere all at once.
This is not luxury brand dog food. It is one of the cheapest ones commercially available hence the lackluster packaging. We do still have a deal with a local dog-food supplier where they provide us this food at COST and this has been a wonderful savings for us. I think that it is wonderful that a businessman would forego profits and do this for us because they didn't have to do that. It's nice to know that there are people out there that will help us any way that they can because this distributor is sort of the sole provider of all dog food for the relatively small market that is Krabi province and if they decided to not give us a discount there would be nothing we could do about it. So we are very grateful for that.
Of course we also stick around to hand out treats and bones and the dogs absolutely love it. I took a photo of the dog above because encountering a dog with this sort of fur that doesn't have a home is extremely rare in Thailand. The "poodle-style' hair is quite popular in this country so I am surprised to see the dog doesn't have a home. It also has a very good demeanor so I took photos and made a profile for adoption because as silly as it sounds to have some sort of designer fur, that is the case with this type of fur in Thailand.
We also found some of the kitties that live here and gave them some food as well although you can probably tell form the picture that the cats are far less likely to approach us when we get here. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that the dogs basically swarm us when we arrive even though at this particular temple they don't really know us that well.
We had a pretty decent donation drive before the beginning of the high season for tourism in Krabi so our financials are actually looking pretty good right now. In fact, this is one of the only times in 2024 that we haven't been terribly worried about running out of money although we are always kind of in danger of exactly that happening. We will continue this fight no matter what happens though!
If you would like to see how you can help out or simply spread the word, please visit our website at
http://krabianimalwelfare.org
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