Anjali has been involved in animal welfare for nearly 35 years. She has a small shelter for old, abandoned and homeless dogs. She has 40 dogs in her shelter. Besides running her shelter single – handedly, she is also involved in a vigorous campaign to neuter and vaccinate dogs and cats. She firmly believes that in order to improve the conditions of street dogs and cats, neutering is the only answer to prevent unwanted births and consequent terrible deaths on the streets due to disease, hunger and accidents. She gets around four to five dogs and occasionally cats neutered in a week. Her focus has been more on dogs since they are easier to catch. Cats are mostly feral and are very difficult to capture but she does get cats neutered whenever she is able to catch them. She gets lots of calls from volunteers for help in neutering cats and dogs. These are individual volunteers who don’t have any funds to neuter or vaccinate. She sponsors surgeries for them whenever sufficient funds are available.
She feeds a number of dogs everyday which adds upto about Rs 4000/-a month. Additionally, the driver and fuel for running her vehicle costs up to Rs 35,000/- a month.
Besides being informed about animals that need neutering through a network of volunteers all over the city, she also drives around from street to street looking for street dogs and cats that need neutering. Besides neutering, she also gets the dogs and cats vaccinated for anti rabies. The cost of neutering is Rs 2500/- for female dogs or cats and Rs 1500/- for a male dog or cat. The anti rabies vaccine is an additional Rs 300/- which gives immunity for three years. Younger dogs have less immunity and hence they are more susceptible to distemper and the parvo virus. So, she also gets the younger dogs vaccinated with the DHPPI vaccine which is an additional Rs 500/-.
Anjali needs more donors to come forward to support her campaign. She is also seeking corporate donors who can contribute as part of their CSR activities.