Sandstorms in the Land of Death!

Well we’ve left behind the paltry 45 degree heat in Delhi for somewhere that’s really hot: Jodhpur. Where, in our first few days, it reached upwards of a blistering 50 degrees each day. This brutal desert heat was the backdrop as we had our first introduction to the Marwar Trust and their base of operations, the large shelter complex on the outskirts of the city of Jodhpur. We’ve learned that term “Marwar” is the name given to this region of Rajasthani desert, and means “Land of Death”. Early in our stay here, this is shown to be far from an idle moniker, as the only respite from the searing heat came in the form of an all out desert sandstorm (they call them “dust storms” locally). First the wind starts to gust, occasionally getting grit in your eyes, but this eventually gives way to all out gales, which pick up the desert and smear it across the entire sky, reducing the sun to dull yellow disc overhead. It isn’t a sudden thing, it seeps in, starting off as a day that just looks hazy, indistinguishable from a bad day of smog. Except that this “smog” just keeps getting worse, the sky continues to darken, and the hot desert wind leaves you with a layer of grimy sand and sweat on your face. Everything takes on a red/brown color as desert sand fills the sky, blending the horizon with the stubborn sand still clinging to the ground. It covers people and buildings, and any open spaces (including your mouth). Even leaving a door or window ajar will cause every surface in that room to be covered in a layer of sand. And anyone who wears contact lenses will be able to sympathize with just how much fun they become in a sandstorm. Through all the beige murk of these eerie desert storms, there is a silver lining as temperatures finally drop from around 50 down to a manageable 35-40. Despite all of this, people here don’t seem to miss a beat, and all work goes on just the same, even for our crew at the Marwar shelter.
Marwar may appropriately mean “The Land of Death”, but the Marwar Animal Protection Trust has made a lie of this definition, through acting as a caretaker for street dog health for over five years. To date, an astounding 50 000 dogs have passed through the shelter as part of their Animal Birth Control (ABC) program.

We get tossed into the mix immediately. Arriving while the daily routine is in full swing, this large complex seems strangely empty as we arrive, the only greeting we receive is a rush of a dozen or so dogs adopted by the shelter workers. It’s a strange location at first, as it looks like rows of houses line the sides of a courtyard filled haphazardly with other buildings. We later learn that these are houses, and the dog catchers live at the shelter in order to look after the animals throughout the evening. While the handful of other buildings are where the whole operation is managed. As we shyly make our way around the compound, we find the two young vets, Ishrat and Kalpat, overseeing the start of an assembly line for dog operations. It’s a flurry of activity as dog handlers deftly move around in large kennels with twenty or so tramp-like street dogs lying around, meanwhile technicians anaesthetize animals before they are carried away to a preparation room for surgery. As the process gets underway, we follow the vets into the high throughput operating rooms at the shelter. In this operating building, about a dozen support staff work, washing, shaving and applying antiseptics to prepare the dogs for surgery. They also clipping and cauterize a notch out of each dog’s ear for easy identification on the street, give each a tattoo and a rabies vaccination, all before they are whisked onto an operating table.

The operating room itself is by far the coolest room in the shelter complex, with air conditioners straining to dent the intense desert heat. Even still, for us Canadians it feels downright balmy. Here there is a different set of challenges, as the patchy power network of India occasionally cuts out; causing lights to blink out, and temperatures to skyrocket in record time as the vets just continue working. Even still, as the coolest area around, technicians when setting up animals on operating tables have a tendency to linger and take in some of the cool air before the vets chase them out again.

As a fun side story, Indian surgeons prefer doing spay procedures through the flank (as opposed to spays on the midline done in North America), but this was stopped here in Jodhpur. The much more visible incision site on the flank of the animal, and the area shaved for surgery led many members in the community to become concerned that something dire was happening to the animals at the shelter; one vet joked that the community thought they were “stealing the dogs’ kidneys”. In order to keep their positive relationship with the community, they fell back to the more discreet midline method, and the complaints from the community stopped.

Surgeries wrap up in the early afternoon, and all this hard work is rewarded with the much anticipated “Chai Time,” where everyone just chills out for a while and drinks a demitasse of what must be the Indian national drink: masala chai (tea made by boiling tea leaves in a pot with water, milk, spices and enough sugar to make a dentist shudder). This is often accompanied by a few minutes of absolutely bizarre Indian television, before lounging is disbanded and post op surveys and treatment is given. In five 50m long wings of kennels, dogs are housed individually for several days after surgery. In these kennels they have their own space, out of the heat, where they have access to food and water. This allows the veterinarians and support staff to monitor the post-operation health of the dogs, allowing the animals to recover from the surgery, or any potential complications that may arise, while in a controlled environment with good food and plenty of water. After several days, and once the staff at the shelter are convinced that the animals are healthy, the animals are returned to the areas where they were first captured, and are released.

As we slowly learn all the “ins and outs” of this daily routine, we are picking up the details of how this mammoth operation runs, and learning our way around these strange, not-quite-tame street dogs. Soon, we’ll be able to dive in with more of our own objectives here in Jodhpur, and get our hands a bit more dirty.