As you step into this half-mud, half-cemented one-acre ashram, some eight to 10 dogs leap towards you wagging their tails.
“Hey handsome,” a staff member calls out, and one of them reports back jumping. They know the command of their caretakers. The canines here are not caged but loved and cared for, rehabilitated and domesticated. At Sai Sanctuary in Chattarpur’s Satbari village, there are 300 of them; picked up from the streets, or brought by good Samaritans or by the staff on urgent calls from across the Capital, especially South Delhi.
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They are fed four times – milk and bread in the morning, packed dog food and/or biryani mixed with dalia (porridge) or any non-vegetarian item in lunch, eggs and soup later in the day, and a proper dinner at night.
A highly-motivated and devoted staff of six to seven feeds them, bathes them, treats them for their wounds and cremates them, when needed, at a specially-designated spot inside the premises.
Within this ashram, dogs roam freely; they play and follow the commands of their caretakers. Each one of them has a name according to its ‘peculiar’ character. ‘Handsome’ is quite a looker; ‘Hawaijahaz’ was paralysed and post-medication runs as if he is “taking off” like an aeroplane; ‘Chhutki’ is the smallest of them all; ‘Kali’ and ‘Whitey’ are named after their colour; ‘More’ is “quite a food hogger” and ‘Jackie Chan’ is tiny ‘stunt doer’. ‘Airport’ has been christened after the place he was picked up from.
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The ashram, that came up in 2001, was the brainchild of Yashwant Kumar and Rajiv Vij, two animal lovers who used to feed 200 dogs every day in the area. Theirs was a chance meeting while feeding the stray dogs 16 years ago.
Recalls Mr. Vij, known more as a ‘Vet’ here because of his experience in treating the canines for close to two decades: “Yashwantji saw me feeding dogs and asked me if I could join him establish a home for them if he financed it. Then he rented a plot of land and we started this ashram with 14 dogs that he brought here.”
The ashram has no sponsors, but it gets raw food material from donations. It doesn’t have a vet either but Mr. Vij’s experience comes handy. Otherwise, they take sick dogs to some nearby veterinary hospitals. They have a couple of old, weather-beaten vans for the job.
Private shelterTo earn some money, they charge Rs.3,500 from dog lovers who come to cremate their animals here. “We are not an NGO but a private shelter, we have no financial support from anywhere but animal lovers often donate to us.”
Union Minister Maneka Gandhi provides “moral support” to the organisation while Red Paws Rescue, a registered charity “shares some expenses”, said one of the caretakers.
The organisation spends between Rs.9,000 and Rs.10,000 a day on the dogs. This includes the expenditure on food, medication and staff salaries.
“Managing so many of them is now getting beyond our means. Earlier, the dogs we brought would stay with us unlike other dog homes, where they are released back to the streets soon after they heal. But now, we will also have to send them back,” said Mr. Vij.
Since there are so many of them, the staff bathes 10 to 15 dogs every day so that within a week all have had a shower at least once. Trained enough not to dirty the space by defecating or urinating anywhere, the dogs show special bonding. They don’t snatch each others’ food, keep a vigil on an ailing ‘buddy’ and don’t eat for days on a companion’s death. Such is their togetherness that they inspired a young photographer Sanchi Aggrawal, a student of Raghu Rai’s Centre for Photography, to do her first photo show on them in a recently-held exhibition at All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society.
Says Sanchi: “I clicked 400 photographs and each one of them had a different tale to tell. They make better picture than any enticing story.”
True.