For anyone who has spent time travelling in Indonesia (or the wider South East Asia area), the sight of stray cats and dogs is a common one.
While many people travelling to Indonesia from abroad tend to love animals and seeing dogs playing on the beach, having so many stray animals can be problematic for the community, and ultimately leaves the animals in a poor state of health or at war with the local residents.
Over the past few years, we have been regularly having a local vet from Manado visit Siladen to help look after the islands animals. Initially, we asked her to neuter stray male dogs to help control the population, however she is now also taking some female dogs to Manado for spaying too (this is a much more complicated procedure than neutering male dogs).
In this time, she has neutered around 40 dogs, and several cats, plus vaccinated many more. She was here just this last week, and during this visit, another five dogs and one cat were neutered.
When she first came to Siladen, many residents were wary and did not want to get their pets vaccinated or neutered, but now she has established herself with the community a little, people are much more open to bringing their pets to be checked over. Not only does this help slow the growth of the animal population, but she can also help to treat other conditions which the animals may be dealing with â such as rashes that are easy to treat, but if left, they can be extremely painful for the animal and can spread to other animals too.
This social commitment project is made possible through donations from both Siladen Resort, and our amazing guests. If you would like to help contribute to our veterinary fund, or any of our other ongoing social commitment projects, please email us at [email protected].
