Several owners are abandoning their dogs because they need no means to support them during the health crisis and Susana Somali has decided to need care of them.
With her medical team, Indonesian doctor Susana Somali takes care of about 1,400 dogs rescued from butchers and cares for them in her Jakarta shelter during the pandemic. During the health crisis, many homeowners with financial problems increasingly abandon their pets or sell them to the controversial dog meat trade this Southeast Asian country.
The vast Somali complex in Jakarta has become a refuge for endangered animals. Somali and his team, acting mainly on warning, fancy the streets in search of stray dogs and butchers where more and more condemned animals spend their last days howling in narrow cages.
In addition to processing COVID-19 samples at the district hospital, Somalis took over the shelter ten years ago. He is not used to rescuing a dog or two from a butcher. But that number has skyrocketed to twenty in recent months, as stray people are snatched from the streets for his or her meat.
Somali negotiates with butchers, sometimes paying them in cash or providing other meat to make sure the animals are released. “The real battle isn't to save lots of them from the butchers, although it's always scary. The challenge is to require care of those dogs during the pandemic,” the lady said consistent with The Jakarta Post.
Somali and about 30 staff at the Pejaten Animal Shelter are struggling to require care of huge numbers of animals as donations drop by the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak. The money is important to hide the high monthly expenses, including employee salaries and then the daily cost of half plenty of meat for the animals.
Several breeds, including huskies, pit bulls and German shepherds, roam the 5,000 square meter shelter that the Somali opened in 2009.