KELOWNA — Anyone who has been to Mexico has probably seen them — stray dogs — some left to die on the side of the road.
It’s an image that a Kelowna veterinarian couldn’t erase from her mind and decided to do something about it.
Doctor Moira Drosdovech and her staff headed south to volunteer their time and skills to help put a dent in Mexico’s stray dog problem.
To give you an idea of the problem, in Mexico City alone, up to 20,000 dogs are euthanized each month by electrocution — a painful and inhumane death, but cheap and available.
Doctor Drosdovech says, unlike in North America where dogs are considered family, dogs in Mexico are considered cheap security.
“Down there, they treat them more as a guard dog. So they buy a dog, put it in their backyard and it stays there its entire life and just barks at strangers walking by. They don’t treat it as a family pet.”
Clinic office manager, Nicole Vincze, came back from Mexico with a lot of memories including treating a puppy with more than 100 tics.
“One lady brought her puppies for us to check and they were absolutely covered in tics, so I was helping a little girl pick them off. We’re not used to that because we only have one or two, not hundreds,” says Vincze.
Vincze’s co-worker came home with more than just memories.
Katie Craig returned to Canada, just in time give her newly adopted Mexican family member her first taste of snow.
“She loved the snow. She just wanted to play and run in it and roll in it,” says Craig.
She says picking one dog out of hundreds was difficult because they’re all competing for the same thing — love.
“The Mexican dogs really want the love. They will fight each other for the attention. We walked through one site and all the dogs were fighting each other because they wanted your love. ”
Doctor Drosdovech and her staff, who had to raise funding for the trip, including collecting bottles, says she and her staff plan on returning to Mexico every two years.
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