What does it take to keep dogs alive

What does it take to keep dogs alive?

Well the first answer anybody can imagine is simply food and water right?
Alright let’s start there.
We currently can only afford the most basic food which is cooked rice and chicken. We cook loads of it. To feed 70 dogs twice a day.

So they are cooked separately and mixed together in their bowl so they can eat. Of course the dogs get tired of it, so a better situation would be ability to mix a bit of pork/liver/fish for instance on some days. Or give them some dry or canned dog food on some days.

There are several reasons. One is a diversity in food gives them better and more nutrients. This makes them healthier and stronger, improves disease resistance and so on. A side reason they need this is that they need good blood values also before a sterilization procedure. One of the things outside of food are the ticks which make blood values drop quick. We are fighting parasites or different kinds but that is a topic for another day.

Next to food of course drinking water is important. Meaning several buckets and other spurces of water scattered throughout the living space of the dogs. It needs to be easy to access and the multiple locations is to avoid conflicts between the animals. Currently there are four main sources of water which we are battling with for different reasons.

  1. City water supply. We are not yet connected to it, but aim to. For part of the year there is no pressure.
  2. Water well with pump. We have a project listed to get this done. Meanwhile we are preparing to share a well with a neighbor and pump it through a hose to us.
  3. Army provided water. This is what we have been using for months now. It is a storage tank you can request to be filled. The tank owner wants the tank back, so we need a new one. This is not ideal because of low pressure and you can only use a limited amount of water on the highest priority items, like cooking and washing food bowls.

4.Rain water. We have little to no possibilities to catch and store this now. There is a pond, which the dogs can later use to cool down and drink from. They can not access this until we fence or wall that area so they do not wander off.

So as it turns out food and water are basic needs as you all imagine. However we still have challenges with these items.

What does it cost now for purely rice+chicken+water per month? Near 10 Euro or US Dollar per month per dog is the answer.

The rest of our operating cost come from other items such as electricity, communication, transport, basic health and keeping the human caretakers alive (meaning basic food and drink). Together with this the operating costs are about 20 Euro/Dollar per month per dog.

We are in dire need of sponsors and donors to cover the monthly running costs. And as you see we are looking to implement one time solutions around for instance water.

That’s it for todays episode.