Animal Rescue with Marion Garnett
Dedicated animal expert Marion Garnett, founder of the Ealing Animal Charities Fair, continues her column
IF you’ve ever thought about changing your life – read on. Sam and Mark Green have done this and are, now, an inspiration to many. Featured in the Metro last July, readers of The Gazette met Sam seven years ago (Gazette, Feb 22, 2013) at the Ealing Animals Fair.
It all started in 2005 when Sam and Mark worked for London Underground and were on duty for the bombings on July 7.
The impact of this tragedy, together with Sam being made redundant shortly afterwards, led to Sam taking a trip to Sri Lanka to recover.
While visiting a temple, she met a dog who was painfully thin and covered in sores. Tracking down a vet was hard but finally a team treating elephants, agreed to help. Later that day, Sam named the dog, Mango and, together with realising the immense need amongst the thousands of street dogs, Dogstar was born.
After that, Sam and Mark moved to Sri Lanka and established an award-winning charity, Dogstar Foundation.
The overpopulation crisis of dogs and cats in Sri Lanka is the main focus of their work. A female dog can have two litters a year with 4-6 pups who will start to breed within the first year. A female cat can have three litters a year of four to six kittens.
With too many animals and not enough owners/guardians or food and shelter, suffering is inevitable. Dogstar focuses on prevention, education and treatment. For twenty eight days a month, they work with a Sri Lankan veterinary team, running a mobile spay/neuter clinic with gas anaesthesia and four operating tables. Working with Mission Rabies, they have also, so far, vaccinated 63,000 dogs against rabies.
The condition of the dogs they feed and treat would be headline news in the UK but not so in Sri Lanka.
For example, Sam recently got a call about Ruwan, a community dog being collectively fed by a group of people near their homes. When Ruwan stopped eating, they clubbed together to pay a vet to examine him. But Ruwan needed hospital admission which they couldn’t afford. The vet could see Ruwan had been sterilised by Dogstar (the missing v-shape bit from his ear) and called Sam. She arranged for him to go to hospital where, despite all care, he sadly died. But at least he was spared a difficult death, from distemper, on the streets.
If you want to follow Dogstar’s work, go to dogstarfoundation.com. And, if you want to change your life, think of Sam and Mark.