I have recently returned from my fourth International
Companion Animal Welfare Conference (ICAWC) and it definitely remains my favourite event
in my TTouch year. ICAWC was developed by its organisers, Dogs Trust, with a belief in
working towards a world where no healthy companion animal is destroyed for want of a
caring home with responsible owners.
ICAWC is dedicated to:
- Elevating the level of care for companion animals
- Promoting positive animal welfare legislation
- Developing and promoting educational programmes to encourage
better understanding, appreciation and care of companion animals
- Assisting animal welfare organisations in strengthening
their projects
- Providing a platform for the interchange of ideas that
impact on companion animals
- Through "Strength in Numbers" making the world a
better place for companion animals
The conference offers shelter helpers and those working to
improve the lives of companion animals around the world the chance to meet, gain knowledge
and ask advice from an array of speakers who all give their services for free. Many
delegates that attend the conference are working in difficult situations with very limited
resources. The price for each delegate to attend the conference may be minimal but for
those who travel from countries such as Russia, the flight expenses alone can be
equivalent to one month's running cost for their shelter.
ICAWC is held in a different European city every year and I
have been lucky enough to have been invited to speak at the conference for the past four
years. Since the first ICAWC in 1996, ten conferences have been organised by Dogs Trust
and although initially the conference was only held every eighteen months, its popularity
grew quickly and ICAWC is now an annual event. Workshops are held on the first day and are
followed by two days of presentations. Each Presentation is around 40 minutes in length
and listening to the other speakers is both an inspiring and humbling experience. I am
glad to say that I have not missed a single presentation since my introduction to ICAWC
and as a result I have had the good fortune to meet some truly remarkable people. Their
stories are often extraordinary and some are even changing the cultures of the countries
they are working in through education and awareness of the important roles animals can
play in our lives. In 2007 my vote for best speaker went to Anneleise Smillie, the (now
former) Director of Education for Animals Asia for a presentation on the Dr Dog and
Professor Paws programme that this outstanding charity run in Asia. Through these two
programmes, the culture of seeing dogs purely as a food source is changing.
Pioneered by Animals Asia Founder, Jill Robinson OBE, the
concept of animal therapy in Asia began with just one dog and a vision to promote animal
welfare through people welfare. Dr. Max - a gentle golden giant - was allowed just one
hour in the garden of the Duchess of Kent Children's Hospital in 1991. It was a visit that
was to mark the start of a positive change in the public's perception of dogs and
following in Max's healing paw prints, the Dr. Dog programme has grown dramatically.
Over 300 'Canine Consultants', registered as official
Animals Asia animal therapy dogs and teams of enthusiastic volunteers make regular visits
to hospitals, disabled centres, homes for the young and elderly, orphanages and schools,
spreading warmth and unconditional love to people in need in 6 countries across Asia.
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Amidst the sea of misery and suffering in an animal market,
Jill found "Eddie" - painfully thin, covered in bite wounds and trapped in a
rusty cage with 3 other frightened, miserable animals. He was waiting to be slaughtered
for human consumption and licked the hand of anyone who reached in and gave him a few
seconds of comfort.
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| Eddie, after his rescue, with Jill Robinson.
Dr Eddie is now a much loved Ambassador for the Dr Dog programme. Eddie is a favourite
with hospital staff and has his own Chinese nickname - wherever he goes he is greeted with
cries of "Wong Jai!" - "Yellow Boy!" by the friendly nurses! Following
magazine and newspaper appearances, Eddie is also becoming a local and international star,
having appeared with Jill on CNN's "TalkAsia" and National Geographic's
"Dogs with Jobs". Eddie is now the narrator and star of his own film in the
Animals Asia "Friends....or Food" video: "Dr. Eddie - Friend....or
Food?". |
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Professor Paws is the brain child of Anneliese who came up
with a unique combination of improving the declining English Language and literacy skills
of local children in Hong Kong while promoting positive ways in which companion animals
can enrich lives. The Professor Paws Pet Cadet programme is an expansion on the
outstanding success of the Dr Dog programme.
Many children in Hong Kong, especially those living on
public housing estates, have never had the chance to touch a dog and parents often tell
their children not to do so because they think dogs are dirty or carry diseases. The
Professor Paws Pet Cadet Programme changes these beliefs. Dr Dogs visit schools where they
become an incentive to help students overcome their shyness and to ask questions in
English. They have been proven to increase social skills and literacy whilst motivating
children to learn. As part of the programme, each child makes a "Pet Cadet
Promise" to love and care for all animals, and then writes their very own special
promise. Some students promise to take good care of their pets, whilst others vow to never
eat dog, and to teach others to be kind to dogs. Thousands of children have benefited from
the Professor Paws Pet Cadet Programme
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Some of the wonderful Professor Paws won the
hearts of primary school and university students alike at a workshop organised and hosted
by City University as part of their students' final year project. |
| There are of course many excellent speakers at
ICAWC and this year was no exception. Day two started with a wonderfully humorous talk by
Peter Kiraly, a specialist small animal vet, who attended the first ICAWC in 1996 and was
inspired to set up his own shelter to help the stray and abandoned animals of Budapest as
a direct result. Peter is a wonderful ambassador for companion animals and is the founder
of the Rex Foundation Animal Shelter which has rescued and re-homed many unwanted animals
whilst raising public awareness (and funds) through brilliant campaigns and education
programmes. Many excellent speakers followed but the
final presentation on day one, given by 'Pen' Farthing, was the one that touched me the
most. Pen was a marine and was serving in Helmand Province in Afghanistan in 2006. After
stopping an organised dog fight, Pen was adopted by the dog he then named Nowzad. |
Professor Mui Mui enthrals his pupils, who just can't get
enough of him!
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Nowzad minus his ears and
tail which had been cut off
by his captors in preparation
for a dog fight.
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Nowzad (so named as he was battered and
scarred like the town of Now Zad where the marines were based) followed Pen everywhere and
obviously told the other stray dogs that Pen had been unknowingly appointed as a Dog
Guardian. RPG and Jena, strays that were very under nourished and didn't look as though
they would survive the onslaught of the Afghan winter, crept into the military compound.
They were followed by a white bitch the lads named Tali, who crept in under the gate
carrying 6 little puppies, followed by an injured dog, who was to be called AK, bringing
up the rear. To complicate matters Jena had 8 puppies as well. In a quiet corner of the base Pen, and two fellow Marines Dave & John, built
the dogs a modest run of sorts and for the dogs added safety they added on a mortar
shelter for them to hide in, which luckily also provided some warmth during the extreme
winter nights.
The dogs had obviously made the right decision and went
from scavenging food to eating two decent meals a day, courtesy of the left over military
rations that the Marines didn't eat. |
Pen had already decided that he was going to try and get
the dogs to a better life but as he was stuck in the small town of Now Zad he had very
limited communications with the outside world. With the help of his wife back in the UK
they managed to track down an animal rescue centre in the far north of the country thanks
to the help of the Mayhew Animal home in London with whom I am also proud to have
connections, through my work as a TTouch Practitioner.
As Pen explains "So the difficult task of persuading a
local Afghanistan driver to take the dogs all the way to the rescue in the north - a
journey of several days - began. Eventually we found a taxi that would take the dogs some
of the way to Lashkar Gar and then they would be exchanged with another driver for the
journey to Kandahar and then swapped again into another vehicle for the drive to the
rescue. We had a few issues with this as we knew that the vehicles would be stopped by the
Taliban at road blocks and for that reason the driver wouldn't let us put the dogs in
cages, (a very British thing to do - definitely not an Afghan method of transporting
dogs), so we had to tie the dogs up with rope and put the puppies into small crates,
(Jena's puppies went into an old bird cage!), not something we were entirely comfortable
with. I knew if the vehicle doors were opened without the driver paying attention then
there was a chance one or two of the dogs would escape......"
When the vehicle left for the epic journey carrying the
dogs of Now Zad that had been, for the last three months, a source of comfort for some of
the lads and had given them a sense of achieving something positive, the feeling of
whether they had done the right thing was at the front of their minds. Not knowing what
would happen to the dogs next was only slightly comforted by the fact that if they had
left the dogs in Now Zad death would probably come sooner rather than later from
starvation or cold. They might even have succumbed to one of the frequent attacks by the
Taliban.
Travelling to the rescue had at least given the dogs a shot
at a safe and cared for life. It was something the Marines were willing to risk. Living in
Now Zad was no life for the dogs. Finally, via a phone call from the UK, the lads found
out the fate of the dogs; Tali, Jena and Nowzad and 13 of the 14 puppies had made it to
the animal rescue. RPG and AK had escaped when the car door was left open. One of the
puppies had been stolen.
The Marines' celebrations were tainted with sadness. They
had no idea when and where RPG and AK had escaped and there was no way they could go
looking for them, but it wasn't all bad news. Pen managed to get Nowzad, and Tali back to
the UK and set up a charity that provided funds to transport Jena to a new and wonderful
life in the US. The charity also helps other dogs in Afghanistan. Pen's story of how he
helped the Helmand dogs is incredible and very moving. You can see a similar presentation
to the one he gave at ICAWC at the ICAWC *website.
Click on 2009 and scroll down the presentations to find Pen's, but be warned - you may
need your hankies! And you can also purchase his book.
My talk was on day two. This year's presentation was on
changing habits through TTouch. I told the story of one of my foster dogs Cookie Dough
Dynamo, and a wonderful terrier named Skipper who we met at the Wag and Bone Show last
year. I also included a clip of a rather reactive rabbit called Monty from my television
series Talking to Animals and a short piece about a touch sensitive cat that I filmed for
the One Show which airs here on BBC1. Having been asked to give a presentation on TTouch
at ICAWC for the past four years I face the constant challenge of giving a talk that will
not only be of interest to people that have seen me speak before but will also inspire
those for whom the concept of TTouch might be new, without overloading them with too much
information. I hope I achieve this each year.
As I was taking my seat in the conference room at the
beginning of day two a lady from Russia named Oksana came to talk to me with her
interpreter. Oksana told me that after my presentation at Berlin (2007) she altered the
way she worked with the animals in her shelter. After trying the TTouch techniques that I
demonstrated through video clips and photographs, Oksana was able to transform a scared
cat that couldn't look at anyone into a cat that became the friendliest one in the
shelter. This is why I love ICAWC, and this is why I love the work that I do. I am
indebted to Dog's Trust for inviting me to be a speaker each year and for including me,
and therefore TTouch, in their International Training Programme, which they run three
times a year here in the UK as a follow on from ICAWC.
I have included some direct quotes and information from the
websites of Animals Asia and NowzadDogs in this article and hope that it has inspired you
to find out more about their outstanding work. For more information, you can visit their
websites at *Animals Asia Foundation
and *Nowzad Dogs. Enjoy.
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