Hi Shelby,
Thank you so much for going.
I'd been thinking about you and planned on writing but you beat me to it.
Gerald said that you'd gotten ill in Peru. I hope that you're better now.
I am a vegetarian too and heard some stories that I would have been better not hearing.
When you have some time, I'd love to post a story on the blog. I haven't posted in a while on it.
We had the fires down south, the oil spill and almost ended up responding with Best Friends in Mexico after the flooding. Now we are on high wind alert for more fires down south this week.
If you send me some pictures and a short story I'll post those too.
Catherine

----- Original Message ----
From: Shelby Davis <gingerbread0505@yahoo.com>
To: PeruEarthquakeAnimalDisasterResponse@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 7:55:42 AM
Subject: [PeruEarthquakeAnimalDisasterResponse] Shelby's better late than never Peru recap

Sorry everybody for the delay in posting pictures and stories of my
trip. It's been one thing after another since I've been back, but
here goes.....

I had a great time in Peru and an amazing experience overall. I
would strongly encourage anyone, who has even the slightest
aspiration, to do international animal aid.

By the time I arrived in Ica, most people had begun to rebuild their
homes and go about their lives as normal. What I was involved with
was spays/ neuters, vaccinations, deworming and treating for ticks
and fleas, and passing out food and collars and leashes. Sharu
Artadi, the project coordinator, hired by Best Friends, and from
Lima, Peru, would work with city officials to select a site in
different areas all around Ica. One day we set up shop at a
dilapidated medical clinic in a very poor area outside Ica, another
day we set up in the front part of a home. A taxi with a bullhorn
would drive the streets of the areas that we set up in, announcing
what we were doing, before you knew it, there was a continuous line
of people, young and old, lined up with their animals. The lines
stayed constant throughout the day, until we either ran out of
vaccines or 5pm hit.

At each spot, a group of Peruano vets, accompanied by Dr Mike Dix,
from Best Friends and Pam Crook from Best Friends, would set up a
surgery area, with two or three operating tables, and a make-shift
recovery space. On a busy day, they did close to 20 surgeries, which
was pretty good considering this is not something widely accepted or
practiced in Peru. A lady kept bringing up Basset Hounds for
vaccines and treatment, but didn't want any of her pets to
be "fixed". Considering that she had 15 dogs, we tried to convince
her to at least neuter the males and she declined- politely.

The non-vets would set up an assembly-type line where people would
come thru and get a dewormer, then it was on to spray for ticks and
fleas (most of the animals were covered in both), receiving collars
and food and then vaccines. A lot of people chose to hang out and
watch the activities, so the sites got to be really crowded. Most of
the dogs were dragged thru the line by their front legs held
together, and then would be released after they were vaccinated to
go run the streets again. We saw TONS of puppies and mothers that
had obviously just finished nursing. Not too many senior dogs- maybe
ten out of about 2000 in my time there.

The collars were extremely popular, and with the donation from
Alicia (sp?)in San Diego and what I was able to bring from donations
from friends and family, I probably passed out close to 200 collars-
many of them flea and tick collars, which were not available in
Peru. I would guess that only one out of every 50 dogs there already
had a collar of it's own.

Most of the people there truly, truly love their pets- they just
have a different way of life there and a different way of caring for
their animals. We did see several wounds from the earthquake that
had not been treated, so there were some pretty nasty broken bones
and lacerations, but overall, the animals seemed to be doing okay.
Not great, but okay. The people were very thankful for what the
group was there doing and several people mentioned that nobody has
ever come to their area before to help them help their animals. I
would love to one day be able to go back to Peru, after having
learned to speak enough spanish, to really work on the humane
education element of things. This is what is really missing in Peru.
Programs for the adults and most importantly the kids. There is a
huge need to try and make more of a dent in the pet population, that
will always be out of control, like there is in many, many places
throughout the world.

As a vegetarian, the treatment of the "meat animals" was by far the
most disturbing part of the trip, but that's a whole nother story.

Thanks again to everybody that helped along the way. I was able to
go and hopefully make a small difference, but it was a group effort,
and without the info and help that I received from Gerald and
Catherine, and others, I never would've had the guts to go in the
first place. I've attached a few pictures- a couple of them show the
collars that were donated from San Diego.

Thanks!!!!