Ding the Dingo pup. Photo: Gloria Morales

This is what Gloria told me:

I don’t know too much about how this little fellow came to me but someone called from The Granites [a large gold mine 300 kilometres further up the Tanami Track from Yuendumu] about a week and a half ago saying that they have a Dingo pup that was very sick and was being sent down to me.

Later that day a bus with a group of young Aboriginal boys turn up at my house about midday.

The boys said that the little Dingo pup was very sick and had been left at the Granites Mine. They didn’t have much more information than that.

I got a box and made him a little home in our bathroom and gave him some water and food – half-cooked chicken necks are very good for small puppies.

At first he was terrified and  hid in a corner, shaking. After a while I got him out and sat him on my lap and gave him a cuddle and got the chicken neck and and put it in my hand.

He must have been a lot more relaxed being held by me because he he started eating like crazy and nearly ate my fingers as I was holding the chicken neck!

He was very skinny, with bones showing through his skin and I could count all of his ribs.

Later I talked to my friend in Alice and she helped me to find a good home for him. It was better for him to go to a new home as quickly as possible so that he could bond with the new person and create a connection with her instead of bonding with me.

I’d looked after him for two days and by the time I took him in to Alice Springs he had managed to start playing with the other puppies and had left the bathroom and gone into the bedroom and hide under the bed or under the side table.

At one time I found that he had dragged one of my pajamas under the side table and was sleeping on them.

By Saturday morning when I took him into Alice Springs he was already filling out, with not as many bones showing and he looked in much better condition and was less easily frightened than when he first came to me.

I’ll be keeping an eye on how he is doing with his new carers.

UPDATE – it seems that Ding’s first choice of carer wasn’t such a good one after all – the house he went to had a few orphaned Joeys and maybe Ding’s genetic hard-wiring kicked in and he started making very agressive moves not only at the Joeys (”lunch!!”) but also the hand that was feeding him…he is now at the RSPCA shelter in Alice Springs – I’ll keep you posted.

Another view of Ding - note the empty belly

]]> http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/10/29/camp-dog-of-the-week-ding-the-dingo-pup/feed/ 5 http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/10/19/camp-dog-of-the-week-miku-ganambarr-stubbs/ http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/10/19/camp-dog-of-the-week-miku-ganambarr-stubbs/#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:33:07 +0000 Bob Gosford http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/?p=1996

Miku Ganambarr-Stubbs

This is Miku Ganambarr-Stubbs, who is one of those rare creatures that lives such an absolutely charmed life that she has you in constant wonder when the charm might run out and she’ll get bitten hard by reality – or in Miku’s case – a bloody great crocodile.

You see, Miku has the rather unf0rtunate habit – for her at least – of taking herself down to the beach at the bottom of her backyard for a swim several times a day – a beach on a bay in crocodile country.

The photo above was taken as she was coming back from her regular morning swim.

Miku's backyard

Muku was bought as a birthday present for my god-daughter, Siena Ganambarr-Stubbs. On getting her home Siena’s parents realised that, as she had yet to develop teeth, that they might have been a bit premature.

So back Miku went to her mother’s teats for a few weeks until she was properly weaned and grown some teeth.

In order to make sure that they got Miku back – and not one of the several other cute little black dogs in the litter – they took the entirely sensible precaution of painting all of her toenails with red nail polish.

Hence her name of Miku – which in the Yolngu Matha language spoken at Miku’s homeland means “Red”.

When they returned to pick her up there were lots of dogs – but none with red toenail polish.

“Where is our dog?”

And, as proof of her qualifications to true campdog-dom, Miku – apart from her predilection for swimming in crocodile-infested waters – has a few other idiosyncracies.

Like most camp-dogs she loves an abandoned Kimbie (the generic term for disposable nappies) or three and she will bring home any abandoned toy that she finds in the street for a chew and a play.

But by far the best fun that Miku has with dead things is with the occasional Cane Toad that she finds squished on the road outside her house.

If she finds a newly road-killed Toad she will roll in its remains in an outburst of unalloyed joy – and comes back to the house stinking and in dire need of a good wash. If the Toad had dried out she delights in bringing it into the house for a good crunch and munch session.

Which usually results in more than a few screams and a firm and fast boot up the date immediately prior to a tumble down the stairs…

Mr Fluff - Cutest little ex-camp dog in town!!

This is Fluff-fluff – or Mr. Fluff, of just Fluff – depending on our mood at the time.

He came over our fence at Yuendumu a few months ago as a very sick young puppy who we thought was going to die soon.

But he is a very tough bugger and survived and thrived to be a thoroughly delightful young pup who got on with all the other dogs and loved his daily walks through the bush.

Over the past few months a group called PAWS in Sydney has been taking a few of our young dogs for placement to local families – including the terrible twins Bobette and Colette, who now have a wonderful new home somewhere in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney.

PAWS describes itself as:

…a small group of self-funded rescuers and volunteer foster carers whose primary aim is to help lost or abandoned animals in NSW, Australia…We are a small, private non-profit rescue group that has no paid staff, no offices to pay rent on, no large advertising campaigns and no government funding. We rely mainly on word of mouth to promote our website, which features animals who are either currently in the Pound, or who have been rescued from Death Row and placed with a foster carer…By featuring their photos and stories on our website it is possible to save a life without the “emotional trauma” of visiting the Pound in person.

Parting with Mr Fluff was pretty hard and a few tears were shed – not only by the humans – I think Mr Fluff was more than a bit worried as he was put into the pet box and onto the plane for Sydney in mid-August.

So it was a profound relief when we heard that Mr Fluff had been accepted by a loving family in Sydney’s eastern suburbs a few short weeks after his trip to Sydney.

And just last week we learned that Mr Fluff now has a new name, “Mali”, and that he has achieved justified stardom as the winner, against some pretty stiff competition, of the Woolahra Council’s Cutest Dog Photo Competition judged at Puppies in the Park on Sunday 20 September.

Puppies in the Park is a new community dog event proudly presented by Woollahra Council providing dog owners in the municipality with information and advice on pet ownership and an opportunity to have some fun with your four legged friends. More than 400 dogs and their owners attended Woollahra Council’s first Puppies in the Park event at Rushcutters Bay Park.

And the prize – a $250 voucher for a portrait sitting and credit towards prints donated by Marc Gafen the Phodographer.

And right about the time that Fluff went off to Sydney to find a new home a dear friend who works with PAWS sent this email out seeking help with this great program:

Earlier this year I volunteered with my twin 15yr old daughters at Yuendemu. My girls helped at the Warlukurlangu Art Centre and I helped the vet Dr Honey Nelson and Gloria with the Dog control program.

In the meantime as a foster carer of rescued pound dogs for PAWS.com.au I am trying to find some homes for the dogs Gloria rescues.

So far I have homed 4 in 2 months and want to do more.

Is there any way you could think of supporting this venture? The dogs are all micro-chipped,vaccinated, de-sexed, heart worm checked and their new owners thoroughly inspected.

I can send photos of the dogs homed to date and the new ones.

So, if you think you can help the work of PAWS – or want to give one of their dogs a home – have a look at the website here.

And if you have any thoughts about or experiences of looking after camp dogs please feel free to register and leave a comment.

And here are a few more – doing one of the three things they do best – sleeping…except for the beautiful stumpy-tailed Ernie, who always has an eye out for the main chance – usually food – and is now also available for adoption.

Have a look at the list on the PAWS site to see his story.

And, courtesy of Gloria Morales, who is far more responsible for the rehabilitation of these animals than I, here are some earlier photos of Mr Fluff from his days at Yuendumu…

"Fluffy"

Someone suggested that we could call this fine specimen of a leatherback camp dog “Jenny” as a tribute to the abject failures of the Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin’s NT Intervention to do very-much-at-all-really about the parlous state of health of too many of the dogs that live in the 73 communities subject to that most flawed of recent attempts at social engineering on the grandest of scales.

But I thought it better that we give her a name that was more suited to her undoubted charm and character – so for present purposes we’ll call her “Fluffy”.

Fluffy is the best example of a leatherback camp dog that I came across during the last week or so of travelling through some remote corners of the NT.

In many of these communities the Federal government appointed “Australian Government Business Managers”, (AGBM’s) whose job it is to represent the interests of the Commonwealth there.

AGBMs live in demountable buildings or converted shipping containers in secure compounds behind tall barbed-wire fences. It is safe to say that the pay and conditions of the AGBM make the AGBM the most well-paid person in town – for an idea of their terms and conditions see this flyer from FaHCSIA.

How effective – from the perspective of local communities – those AGBM’s have been is a very open question. But it is undisputed that, like many of the measures implemented under the NT Intervention, AGBMs represent a clumsy and expensive attempt at delivering improved services to the 73 remote townships in the NT that they have effectively controlled for the last two years.

And, as one community member told me this week while we were watching Fluffy gobble a lump of meat I’d given her, if either of the NT or Federal governments allocated a mere fraction of the money they’ve wasted on the NT Intervention to looking after the health and welfare of the dogs in those communities then the Intervention might be seen as being more effective and would be more readily accepted by Aboriginal people here.

As it is now, there is no systematic approach to the health and welfare of dogs in remote townships by either the NT or Federal governments. But it is not all bad news – a number of dog health programs are supported on an ad-hoc basis and there is at least one non-government organisation that has done some great work to both raise the profile of dog health ad welfare as an issue for governments and to inform  Aboriginal people of the real benefits that can come from careful and well-planned programs of dog welfare and control.

In the past dog control in remote townships has been conducted by two main measures – either “do nothing” or to conduct unilateral control measures with minimal community engagement.

The do nothing approach is sadly typical of the approach of governments to domestic animal control generally. For many remote councils and the NT and Federal governments it has been seen as just too hard to establish and build lasting relationships with Aboriginal people to work out fair and equitable systems of animal control and welfare. Local councils were generally overwhelmed by gross under-funding, lack of administrative capacity and appreciation of alternatives. Territory and State governments appear never to have quite come to grasp the seriousness of the situation.

Too often the alternative to doing nothing was the apparently easier but far less effective option based on a unilateral decision by a local (usually white) town clerk or administrator that there were “just too many bloody dogs around town” and arranging for someone, often the local policeman, to round up the arbitrarily-selected “excess” dogs and shoot them – sometimes out of town – often in front of their owners. Sometimes the more humane, but no less traumatic for the owners of the dogs, alternative was to arrange for a vet to come out and do a mass cull.

Slowly – too slowly for many – more enlightened approaches to remote community dog management are emerging. In my home town of Yuendumu the local Warlukurlangu Artists arts centre has for several years been supporting and funding a dog welfare program.

You can see some photos of healthy Yuendumu dogs and their close involvement with Warlukurlangu’s artists at the art centre’s website here.

Warlukurlangu describes dog program as:

After several years of running an ‘unoffical’ dog program, the Art Centre Committee agreed to formalise the art centre’s commitment to improving the health of the many dogs in Yuendumu.

The management of the art centre strongly believes that ‘healthy dogs mean healthy people’. As part of this program the art centre feeds dogs, de-ticks and cares for sick and abandoned dogs as well as providing daily advice to community members on how to better take care of dogs. WAAA also helps to fund vets to come to the community and sterilise dogs and treat them for various diseases.

In November 2007 and January 2008 the art centre together with Yuendumu Council organised for the Veterinary Doctor Honey Nelson to spend several weeks in the community putting down unwanted dogs and inserting birth control implants on as many male dogs as she could.

Warlukurlangu has received some assistance from the local Council and has also recently received limited funding from FaHCSIA through the local AGBM.

Another example of a more enlightened approach to the management of dog health and welfare in remote townships is AMRRIC (Animal Management in Rural and Remote Indigenous Communities), an organisation that:

…is an independent group of Veterinarians, academics, health workers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We facilitate sustainable dog programmes in remote Indigenous communities to improve the health and wellbeing of the entire community.

AMRRIC receives some funding from FaHCSIA and some other government agencies and is gradually expanding its reach and programs. One important part of its work is to provide relevant and culturally appropriate training material for veterinarians.

Most recently AMRRIC has developed the first-ever manual for Veterinarians and communities undertaking dog health programs in remote Indigenous communities. Conducting Dog Health Programs in Indigenous Communities: A Veterinary Guide has been produced by Dr Samantha Phelan, a Northern Territory-based veterinarian with significant field experience in remote Indigenous communities.

AMRRIC has also recently received funding from the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy to produce a DVD based on Samantha Phelan’s Veterinary Guide.

AMRRIC Board member Dr Samantha Phelan wrote this guide for Environmental health Practitioners (EHP’s) nationally. This key resource is a reference guide for people wanting to make dogs healthier in their own communities or in communities they work in. It was written for the wide range of people who take part in Environmental Health Programs in communities, such as Indigenous Environmental Health Workers (EHW), Environmental Health Officers (EHO), Area Health Services and Health Boards, Departments of Local Government (DLG), State Government Environmental Health Units and Indigenous Land Councils, to name a few. ‘The book is written to help each of those people to do a better job’.

The AAWS Funded DVD will be a project that involves a number of key players. First of all the background will be Samantha’s AMRRIC manual information and some of its illustrations will be animated. There will be film footage taken by the Media Students from Batchelor Institute for Indigenous Studies. Our actors will be Indigenous Students from Batchelor who formed the focus groups for the development of the Manual. This education DVD will enable EHP’s to educate schools, individuals, communities and groups on issues such as Stopping Skin Sores, Stopping Ticks and fleas, the benefits of desexing dogs, Stopping dog bites and what to tell children for staying safe, Stopping Worms in dogs and stopping them getting into people and Stopping dogs getting diarrhoea and spreading germs to people. It is anticipated that the project will be completed by the end of August.

AMRRIC deserves more support from governments and the public – Fluffy looks like an absolute wreck that most people would not hesitate to put down immediately – but, as I’ve seen from personal experience – it is relatively easy to save dogs like Fluffy and restore them to the good health they deserve. All it takes is food, some treatment for mange and ticks and some loving attention.

28 puppies!! Picture: Gloria Morales

This is our bathroom floor few months ago…thankfully (?) I was away working at the time. I’m told there were 28 puppies in the house at the time – on top of our usual extended canine family. It is a sort of Where’s Wally” exercise but I can count 21 just in this photo…a few others must have wandered out of shot.

For a few years now we have taken puppies from litters (recovered/relocated?) around Yuendumu and taken them to the RSPCA in Alice Springs. There most of them, unfortunately, have been put down.

Estimates of how many have ended up at the RSPCA over the past few years are somewhere north of 300. I can’t take much of the credit for this – I just drive the car, put up with their crying and feed and clean up after them – usually we only keep puppies for a few days, and lately, largely because of an active breeding control program, the number of new litters around Yuendumu has dropped substantially.

Many of the problems with dogs and their people in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory and elsewhere arise from conflicts between the traditional relationship between humans and dogs that stretches back long before the arrival of European invaders in 1988.

Alice Springs Veterinarian, Dr. Honey Nelson, has been working with Aboriginal people in many parts of the Northern Territory and summarised the relationships between Aboriginal people and their dogs in her 2007 Report to the Commonwealth and NT governments “Dog and Family Health in Remote Aboriginal Communities. A Critical Welfare issue for Animals and Aboriginal families”, the subtitle of which is telling – A Plague of Beautiful Dogs.

Dr. Nelson says, in part, that:

• Aboriginal people have an ancestral love and duty-of-care for dogs, which they still carry out today.
• The native Dingo is self-sufficient for food, breeds once-yearly, and limits its own population.
• The European Camp Dog quickly displaced the Dingo as an Aboriginal companion, and is dependent, needful and breeds large litters twice yearly, without self-limitation.
• Remote Aboriginal communities are overwhelmed by Dogs in plague proportion, with no (or rare) access to veterinary care, or assistance with humane population control.
• These Dogs suffer from endemic debilitating diseases, such as mange, ticks, fleas, worms, constant fight injuries, and roafd trauma – without any available treatments, pain relief or euthanasia.
• There are demonstrable serious adverse effects on family health and hygiene, related to dog faeces and parasitism’s, including transmissible diseases such as scabies, ringworm, fleas, hydatids, ticks, risk of roundworm retinitis, and opportunistic bacterial infections which can cause or exacerbate not only skin sores by systemic infections such as kidney, liver and heart valve disease.
• Dog control in some communities consists of a mass round-up and shooting of dogs, often publicly.

And there is much more. When I have an electronic copy of Dr Nelson’s paper I will link it to this post.

Here at Yuendumu the dogs are almost universally healthy – most dogs have had some form of fertility control and have receive the quick and simple treatment (usually using the cattle tickicide Ivomec) to remove the high loads of ticks and other external and internal parasites that many dogs are carrying. And the visible side of dog health is something that is easily taken for granted in a community where these simple and relatively inexpensive measures have been implemented – go to a township where there is no similar dog health and control program and the difference can be shocking.

There is much that needs to be done here – Aboriginal people have an undoubted love for, but often a diminished capacity to care for – largely because of lack of access to appropriate, if any, veterinary services – for the domestic animals they share their living spaces with. Through the good work of individuals Dr Nelson and many in the Yuendumu community much has been done to control many of the problems that dogs cause here.

But there is still no ongoing funding or certainty that the necessary work will be supported and agencies like the newly formed Central Desert Shire, the NT and Federal Governments and the local Australian Government Business Manager have a unique opportunity to implement real and effective dog control – even as a trial program.

And there is an increasing interest in addressing these issues in many centres in the NT – last month AMRRIC - Animal Management in Rural and Remote Indigenous Communities held a conference looking at these issues – for more information go to the AMRRIC site.

Got a view about this post or about dogs in Aboriginal townships? – got a camp dog?

Register, leave a post and start a discussion or just put your point of view!!