Update from Peru
Best Friends medical director arrives to oversee launch of rescue plan.
By Rich Crook, Best Friends Rapid Response Manager
Best Friends medical director Dr. Mike Dix arrived this week along with staffer Pam Crook. Those two join me, recent-arrival Roy Coscio, who is a dog caregiver at the sanctuary and is from Peru, and Shari Artadi, formerly of the Peruvian Association for the Protection of Animals. We will teach the locals about the importance of sterilizing and vaccinating their animals and why.
In a nutshell, our team will work the three main affected areas of Ica, Chinca and Pisco over the next couple months. We’ll hire local vets and techs to perform spays/neuters, administer combo vaccines and provide basic animal care. Most of this work will be performed by the locals and supervised by one of our vets.
We hope the local folks we hire will be capable – under the guidance of Shari or another strong local personality – of continuing the work we’ve started and move to other areas of Peru.
Over the past week, I have actually gone against one of my rules and split up the team to help accomplish more work in a shorter period of time. Having Shari as our guide, along with the fact that Aldo Wilson, who works at the sanctuary, is a licensed vet in Peru and knows his way around, made splitting up possible.
Aldo stayed behind in Lima to acquire the many supplies we need while the rest of the team went to Ica to secure housing and meet again with local officials.
One would think having a meeting or renting a house would be relatively easy work, but it’s not, at least not in an area recovering from an earthquake. For instance, government offices had to be relocated, so even finding local officials was challenging. As far as renting a house goes, well, I can’t tell you how many times we heard, “Sorry, we already have someone else lined up” or “Sorry we just rented the house yesterday.”
As it turned out, we were able to get a financially sound deal with a local hotel, so everything worked out well.
We then picked up our signed copies of the memorandum of understanding from the local officials. The MOU is the blueprint for our operations here. It got us a fair amount of airtime on a local television station; Shari did great, I smiled and nodded.
Local officials here are an absolute pleasure to work with. For instance, the other day I requested a sectional map of the city so we could plot our work and confirm where and what work others had done. Regional Ministry of Health official Marco Arbulu, a government veterinarian, hopped in the car with us and off we went to someone’s house. Ten minutes later out he comes out with exactly what we needed.
Part of what we will be doing over the next few days is visiting some of the physical locations where we’ll be setting up operations and finalizing preparations. We’ll be setting schedules, posting bulletins about our whereabouts, and meeting with local vets. Work should officially begin this weekend.
Photo by Molly Wald