45. Visiting NANAS by appointment only

"Nobody is permitted to visit NANAS if I am not around," Mr Raymund Wee said over the telephone. "Prior appointments are needed."

I could not understand why. Surely it is in the best interest of NANAS to encourage more visits. It is like the Giant Panda attracting over 40,000 visitors at the American zoo at one time. With exposure to members of the public, it will be good for fundraising. After all, Raymund said that the expenses for the maintenance of 1,000 animal residents come up to $700,000 per year. And there is never sufficient money.

Raymund explained: "There are at least 500 free roaming dogs in NANAS. NANAS does not put dogs to sleep unlike other animal shelters. The dogs get excited if some new person arrives. What if a visitor gets bitten? NANAS may suffer litigation costing millions of dollars".

"Has any visitor been bitten?" I asked.

"No,"



"How do you manage to control the tick infestations of so many dogs?" I asked. This is an important question as Singapore dog breeders do have to control ticks in their breeding farm.

Raymund told me the various names of insecticide used, "I rotate various insecticides as the ticks become resistant to them after a while. Ivomectin injection is the better method to once a month oral but it is too costly to use injections for so many dogs. Furthermore, injection has to be done carefully otherwise ivomectin goes directly to the blood stream. There are certain dogs that will never allow injection.

"Is garlic effective in tick control?" I asked as there were some proponents of the use of garlic for mosquito control in the U.S.A.

"No." Raymund said. "Garlic can be toxic. On the other hand, the sanctuary cannot be totally sterile and free from any disease causing organism. It is not practical and not good for the dogs as they don't build immunity."

"Why don't you plan ahead and employ newly graduated veterinarians from overseas to do sterilisation of dogs and cats?" I suggested in reply to his complaint that experienced veterinarians are not interested in performing batch of sterilisations for 8 hours at a stretch.



This is because each colony of cats is sterilised at one time and returned back. In this way, there is disease control and prevention of viral spread to all cats in other colonies. So, the veterinarian must be able to be productive and competent. Competence comes from experience.

"I thought young graduates would gain considerable surgical experience in NANAS," I said.

"The main problem is that some young vets, being inexperienced, are slow and needs supervision. Some of them leave behind remnants of ovarian tissues and do not ligate tightly, leading to bleeding. Some also do not ask for help.

Sometimes, just make a bigger incision would do. Some vets prefer flank (side of the body) incisions for sterilisation and may not be competent to do it. It is not as easy as midline incisions (middle lower part of the body).

Wow, animal shelter medicine is definitely so much different from my private practice. There must be a way whereby experienced veterinarians are decently paid to carry out animal shelter surgery without being mentally exhausted to do factory production line sterilisations for 8 hours a day.

According to Raymund, at least 85% of the street dog and cat population in a place need to be sterilised before any results can be seen. Can he get government or town council grants to do it? There is no easy answer as governments have their priorities and their public relations advertisments and political show-offs.