Important new project, vaccines, and our work continues!

September 8, 2021

Dear Friend of India's animals:

This has been a year riddled with challenges and loss. The new wave of the pandemic has devastated families and has taken a heavy toll on the countries of India/Nepal as a whole.

The world is focused on the Covid vaccine. However, it is important that the rabies vaccine continue to be administered in India/Nepal. Rabies is an incredibly terrible and incurable disease that causes intense suffering. It is a tragedy of our times that continues and needs to be addressed.

The lockdown may have eased somewhat, but the monsoon season brought some of the worst rains in over a decade flooding many areas. With one blow after another these are hard and desperate times.

The good news is that rabies is preventable by vaccine and costs only $1.00 per dog. A pamphlet describing how to avoid rabies and what to do if someone were to be bitten by a stray dog will be also widely distributed and costs only 8 cents.

In Nepal, at Lalitpur, our grantee Sneha's Care is vaccinating 10,000 community dogs! Providing animal birth control would help the situation even more. Spay and neutering costs approximately $20 per dog and we have committed to spaying 300 female dogs, castrating 100 male dogs , giving them all vaccinations and publishing and disseminating 4000 leaflets.

Also in Nepal, Help Animals India is supporting "animal birth control" and vaccinations for hundreds of dogs at through the kind efforts of Project Humane Nepal and Animal Nepal - here are some of the cuties.

India/Nepal also have a sizeable stray cat population whose plight deserves just as much attention as the dogs. In fact, cats can give birth up to 4 times a year, making it even more necessary to spay them in order to control their population. Doing this helps ensure their welfare and prevent rabies. Help Animals India supports major cat animal birth control in India at CUPA in Bangalore and in Nepal through Animal Nepal.

Also in Nepal, our long time support to Animal Nepal's rescued donkeys continues. The brick kiln industry is a brutal one for sweet and sensitive donkeys. Meet Lava, who at the time of rescue, like many other donkeys, had open wounds on their back from carrying heavy loads with improper saddles. Although very shy of people due to previous abuse, Lava has recently become very friendly!

After years of living at the sanctuary, it seems like he has finally accepted the humans of Animal Nepal. Lava enjoys being caressed! Seeing his slow but amazing transformation has been incredibly special and inspiring. It also goes to show that rehabilitating animals can take years and requires so much time, effort, and patience.

Animal Nepal hopes to give Lava and the other equines that they shelter many more years of a happy and comfortable life.

Meanwhile, back in India, our most important project at Varanasi for Animals is really paying off. People are now bringing in their own community dogs for spay/neuter/vaccination as per below. Hundreds of dogs are being helped each month. See the enthusiastic face of this young man (below) who is full of joy that he can now complete a big mission to help his buddy, his community dog.

And more good news is that another veterinarian, Dr. Umesh Chandra Yadav , is joining the dedicated staff of animal handlers and para vets at Varanasi for Animals - now two vets can bring more abilities to help even more animals!

In nearby Sarnath, our yearly project funded by Brigitte Bardot Fondation will begin shortly and none too soon. These are just a few of the pups and these were found in the trash! Their mother now needs to be spayed and they will be when older. The community is only so tolerant of the street dogs and they are running out of patience. We must continue to communicate that animal's lives also matter in these tough times. Our local help is frantically working to save puppies lives and feed the dogs. They are also reassuring the community that people from across the globe truly care and will help. They are informing the community that we will spay and vaccinate the dogs to help decrease the street dog population. And that this will in turn help allay the communities fears and risk of contracting rabies.

Did you know that unlike many animal shelters in the west that focus on either companion animals (cats/dogs) or farm animals - the animal shelters we help support save, rescue and treat almost all animals?

Pictured here is dear little Cupcake, an injured pig being cared for at our grantee in Dehra Doon, India. Rahaat for Animals cares for many different types of rescued animals. Also, the sanctuary is almost all vegan (except for the cats).

Shelter from the storms!

Moving over to North East India, the most neglected states, our focus is on our long time grantee JBF "Just Be Friendly" which is located in the state of Assam. JBF is part of the front line enforcement of the dog meat ban. Many dogs are stolen from that area to be part of the heinous and illegal dog meat trade further east in the state of Nagaland.

We are helping to support and strengthen JBF by building their dream center - JIRAW (JBF Integrated Care and Resource Center for Animal Welfare). Help Animals India donors are supporting the construction of the operating theater and kennels, can you help with any amount to help bring the project to completion? Contact us if interested in all the exciting plans as to below:

JIRAW will provide technical and managerial training to field NGOs and welfare activists of all the eight states of North East India.

For rescued farm animals, companion animals, lab animals, zoo animals & wildlife research. They will teach techniques from field evidence based information on the most humane and effective handling methods and protocols. These methods will improve the welfare of the animals.

For the animals everywhere

They are nations onto themselves! "We patronize the animals for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they are more finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time" - Henry Beston

Here is an amazing and rare photo of the majestic and strong (but endangered) Indian Gaur family. The were recently photographed in the forests of Karnataka State by Surendra Varma and Kishore. It fulfills the famous Henry Beston quote that the animals exist along us and have every right to a protected environment of their own. Wildlife must be helped.

This sweet calf (below) is Javed, rescued from slaughter by Rahaat for Animals, Dehra Doon who writes: We really love Javed and is a part of our family for life, thank you to Help Animals India donors for making so much of our work possible!

With love and deepest appreciation from the Help Animals India team, all of the animals, and our colleagues in India and Nepal who serve them. We wish you all the blessings to be well and have success in your efforts to bring happiness and comfort to all.