In the interest of distressed animals, particularly stray dogs, local veterinarian Dr Mithila J Singhal held a free canine first-aid workshop at her clinic on Saturday. The two-hour long workshop was attended by animal-lovers from diverse backgrounds. In addition to theoretical talk the workshop provided hands on training to the participants thanks to an indie dog called Googly for live demonstrations and practice of various first-aid actions. With the intelligence and good behaviour that this dog displayed, she also served as an inspiration and example to convey a public message to adopt and embrace indie dogs instead of just buying pedigree and foreign breed dogs.
Commenting on the workshop, participants Garima Newly and Abhishek Giri said, “The first time that we tried to rescue a stray, we could not save that dog because we had compassion but no knowledge of what to do. This is a common situation- where there are individuals who want to help an injured or sick dog but due to lack of even basic knowledge, they only look at the animal in pity. Thus, workshops like these are extremely useful and needed. We learnt many important things like CPR, bandaging, first-aid for fracture, maggot wounds, dog bites, burns, poisoning, high fever etc and what all a first-aid kit should have.”
During the workshop, Dr Singhal also highlighted concerns in treatment of strays, key among them being overdose of medicines like ivermectin as multiple people or NGOs land up treating the same dog that sometimes causes serious complications like blindness, liver failure and even death. There is an urgent need to devise a system to have some sort of marking on the animal to convey that the animal is being treated already to avoid this, she said.
Sunday, 21 February 2021 | PNS | Dehradun
