Our last day.
 I will confess to very mixed feelings at the thought of leaving. On one hand I’m looking forward to going home but on the other, there are so many dogs that I wish I could see go home too before I leave. My mission was to get E1 to the point of going home and that is literally days off now but I really regret not having more time with E14. He’s finally responding to the essential oils and his wound has a 1cm margin of clear, pink healthy skin around it. His toe wound is also healed and the fistula on his left shoulder that used to break out and leak pus every few days has nice, healthy pink skin instead of a soggy, oozing hole. He is calmer and less agitated and is much more affectionate and less timid with me. It’s hard not to feel I am abandoning him but that’s just me being indulgent and letting my feelings getting in the way. Although I know he sees my visits as something positive to break up the day, all he is ultimately concerned with is survival in the moment and as long as he is fed, watered and safe, he will cope. Ultimately, he is a street dog and he will be so much happier back on the streets, especially now he is castrated, as he is less likely to get into another fight over a bitch that was what landed him in here in the first place.

By castrating and vaccinating all dogs, the risk of rabies is reduced year by year since the number of dog fights reduces because there is less competition for bitches in season and any dogs that do bite, have a higher chance of being vaccinated and therefore not infective. Being bitten while vaccinated isn’t protection from the disease although does buy the individual time so in theory, a dog bitten and picked up for treatment that had already been through   the programme, would automatically have a booster vaccination and so could be protected from developing Rabies if done within a few days as the booster is simply a way of raising the immunity already present in the body.

Each dog that comes through TOLFA has a small notch cut out of the left ear and a tattoo inside it, done while under anaesthetic for ABC, that records when it was put through the programme and where it was picked up so that an animal that comes back in, say as a result of a road accident, could receive a rabies booster and any other treatment required.

Research shows that about 15% of the dog population needs to be left entire (i.e. not sterilised) to breed in order to keep a stable population. Dogs do a good job of killing vermin, cleaning up food scraps that encourage rats and mice and also provide an early warning system and protection for their area of street. If anything dodgy goes on at night, the dogs soon let you know and this is one of the positive selling points that is emphasised to local people in order to encourage them to either take responsibility for feeding and watching the health of “their “ dogs, or to keep a neutral attitude towards them at the very least.

Rachel wanted to take us to Pushkar to see the Camel fair in the afternoon so we had just the morning to walk the dogs and say our goodbyes. Somehow, I just managed to walk all mine and do their treatments as well. It was a real wrench to say goodbye to each dog as I put it back in its pen for the last time.

At 1pm Wendy came and said we were having lunch on the roof so we climbed the bamboo ladder and sat eating spicy cauliflower scooped up with bits of chapatti and watching the family who live next-door irrigating their Millet crop. They have a water pump connected to a talk supply with a long corrugated pipe. Each field is subdivided into small squares with the plants in the furrow, divided from the next row buy a ridge. The water is pumped into each section to run into the furrows and is held there by the ridge until it has soaked into the poor, sandy soil. The section is then blocked up by drawing soil up to make a bund before moving on to the next section. As a desert region, Rajasthan is almost pure sand and even the areas that have been farmed for centuries and have had manure put on it for years and years, are still covered in a really thin layer of extremely thin, sandy, “hungry” soil. That anything grows is a minor miracle and testament to the care and work each family put in to their patch. This is true, hand-to-mouth, subsistence farming.

Birds-eye-view of irrigation taken from the roof of the TOLFA office.

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View of the kennel blocks and puppies hanging-out in the yard, taken from the roof.

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Local people buy the manure from the cow and donkey block at an affordable price to use on their land. Ox cart is the usual form of transport.

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The Camel Fair

After lunch, we got into the ambulance and drove back to Pushkar. It was wonderful to be back and in the 4 days we had been away, the town had been transformed into a multi-coloured, manic, camel and horse packed fairground. Over the whole site of about 20 acres, there were Mawari horses, with their curious, inward pointing ears…

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…Camels dressed up like Christmas trees…

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… and stalls selling everything from camel saddles to sweets and most things in between. Wherever you went, touts appeared trying to sell you everything you have never wanted and more besides, and all at “special price for you only today”.

 There is a knack to dealing with touts, street sellers and beggars that usually is as simple as putting up your hand and saying “Nay”, which means no, and walking on, studiously ignoring them, which is something that I have no problem doing but some are more persistent and will ask you “why you not want to buy?” Quite by chance I discovered that the simple answer to that one is “Because I don’t like it and I don’t want it,” and they gave up.
Another thing that sometimes works is to say you bought the exact same thing the day before and paid half of what they are asking, which in my case was true when I was offered some bright-coloured felt camel and horse hangings and if they say they will do you a better price now then you just ask “Why on earth would I want to buy more?”
Dark glasses are useful too as it is more difficult for people to engage your attention if they can’t make eye contact but you have to remember to take your glasses off if you genuinely are interested as it also works in reverse when you get to the haggling process. When you do want to buy, the whole charade of bargaining is really good fun. Traders are usually very good humoured and will look at you with wide eyed astonishment when you offer 200 Rupees for something they are asking 500 for and tell you that they have 3 children to feed, they personally sewed on each and every sequin by hand the previous night, it is of the highest quality and you are very lucky to be offered it at such a good price.  The deal is that you offer about 50% of the asking price and meet them at three quarters but if they really won’t budge on price then you just say you will buy it somewhere else and thank you, start to walk away and watch the back-pedalling begin and the price come crashing down.

You do sometimes feel really mean haggling over something that only cost the equivalent of 50p in the first place and to be honest, there were some things I didn’t bother but you generally have to learn to stop converting everything to Sterling and look at the local value and what is a fair price to the seller in Rupees.

Very rarely do you get verbally berated for refusing the asking price but just occasionally a trader will be having a bad day and be a bit surly about it. On the whole, I found that if you enter in to it in the right spirit, the whole process is a lot of fun!

We wandered around the fair ground, being impressed by the intricate patterns clipped into the camel’s hair and painted onto their bodies with Henna…

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…. and being singularly unimpressed by the occasional camel who was not only tied to a pole and had its back legs hobbled but had one, or in the case of one poor camel, both front legs tied up which meant it really had no option but to lie down the whole time…

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As you can see from the picture, the free vet treatment clinic run by Help In Suffering (doing similar work to TOLFA but based in Jaipur), The Brooke Hospital and TOLFA itself, is just behind this camel so with a bit of luck, they will have picked up on it and had a word with the owner to discuss other, more humane methods of making sure the camel doesn’t wander off but can still reach its food and water.

As luck would have it, a TV crew turned up and, seeing 5 white women, made a beeline for us and asked for an interview. We thrust Rachel forward with a muttered (“Go girl, it’s free publicity”) and then they asked me so I got a plug or two in for TOLFA at the same time.