Kids’ Corner:
Soi Dogs of Thailand
This is a three-legged soi dog we met in Bangkok. He seemed happy in spite of only having three legs.
“Soi” means “street” in Thai, so a soi dog is a street dog, meaning a dog with no home or owner. There are many of them roaming the streets of Thailand, but luckily for them, they have friends. The Soi Dog Foundation, based in Bangkok and Phuket, helps these dogs in many ways, which I will tell you about.
First, the dog meat trade: In Thailand 500,000 dogs are smuggled into Vietnam, sold for about $40 apiece to restaurants, then served in various dishes. Although there is talk that this trade may soon be outlawed, countless shelters are currently fighting against the dog meat trade.
One of Soi Dogs Foundation’s biggest rescues took place in midsummer 2018, when around 70 dogs were found in the forest about to be killed for the dog meat trade. The dogs were overcrowded, injured, and traumatized. They were transported to the Soi Dogs shelter and given the care they needed.
These dogs were rescued from the meat trade by the Soi Dog Foundation in Thailand.
Soi Dogs also frequently rescues dogs that have been abandoned, trapped, and injured. This organization has only one vet for the dogs that are infected, disabled and in need of vaccination! They were kept very busy by after the Bangkok floods of 2011. During this flood, 200+ dogs where found trapped on an “island” made by a small bridge, surrounded by three and a half feet ( two meters) of water. Soi Dog Foundation made a visit to “dog island” to help.
They set out on a small boat to rescue dogs that had attempted to escape the island and were clinging to vines. These poor scared dogs put up a fight, not understanding that they were being rescued. They took the dogs back and fed all of them. Within three days all the dogs were evacuated from the bridge and transported to Soi Dog Foundation headquarters to recuperate.
Soon maybe our three-legged dog friend in Bangkok may be wearing a vest like this dog.
Another amazing Soi Dogs project is transforming unwanted and often brutally mistreated street dogs into valuable watch dogs to protect communities. Watch Dogs is a program to help the soi dogs of Thailand and Vietnam be heroes rather than a hindrance. Soi dogs are found in almost every neighborhood in Thailand, and now some of them are wearing crime-fighting vests!
This soi dog is wearing a special vest that gives him doggie superpowers!
The vests communicate with an app which is available for people to download, that can alert them by phone when the dogs’ vests are activated. The vests have bark-activated cameras, which send an alert to the phone of the nearest resident of the neighborhood, so they can run to help stop the fire, burglary or other occurrence.
The Soi Dog Foundation also has a program called OAP where senior and disabled dogs can live out the rest of their lives without fear of being euthanized. Our three-legged friend in Bangkok is lucky to have Soi Dogs on his side! For more information on this amazing organization, please visit their website at https://www.soidog.org/