Kinship Circle’s team splits today, with Ron Presley and Stephanie Naftal on food drops. Tracie Dawson, June Towler and Trisha Fravel — along with Corrine (Save Elephant Foundation) and Amy (a SCAD Foundation veterinarian from the U.S.) assess a temple animal sanctuary some 2.5 hours away. The property, with 500 or more dogs, desperately needs help. An initial objective is to verify reports of many sick cats.

Nothing prepares us for reality: More than 1,000 animals live in a collapsing structure. Cats among dogs…with a few pigs…all in a sea of debris, feces, muck, trash, swamp. A putrid stench rises from fecal matter mounds that swarm with flies.

Many animals are injured. Dogs hobble on two or three legs. Wounds fester untreated. Severe mange leaves some fur-less. A TVT (Transmissible Venereal Tumor) dog roams freely, endangering the entire population with this highly contagious cancer spead through sniffing and routine touch. Nearly all are emaciated. We’ve stumbled upon a grand-scale hoarding situation, exacerbated by an influx of animal flood victims.

Previously submerged, a monk property manager had some water pumped out. Still, a courtyard centered between a U-shaped building is a stagnant swamp. Dogs huddle so thickly, we have to wade through them. Caged cats hang from an upper level ceiling, surrounded by dogs. Some even even lie atop cat cages suspended over window-like openings. If cages fall, they’ll plunge into a toxic mix of water and sludge.

Filthy wire cages over debris-filled dark warter. Crate piled atop crate with loose dogs draped on all sides. An animal occupies every nook and cranny on surfaces slippery with feces and urine. A room toward the back houses many more cats, all sick. They are in severe stress, strung from cages. A lower floor is wall-to-wall dog. No video, photos or words can capture the full horror, small and tactile impact of this scene…

Despite circumstances, a surprising number of dogs seem healthy. Cats, however, are in worse conditions. We encounter some language and cultural barriers with two women (the primary caregivers) and the other sanctuary people. But they eventually allow us to move cats away from dogs into a cattery we arrange outdoors.

We enter heavy clean-up mode and agree to send a team the following day for continued assistance. We pull large, heavy steel cages from the swamp, even as the mucky wet sucks our feet and cages downward. Once on sturdy ground, cages are cleaned and sanitized.

We are informed that Thai Agriculture Department personnel will be on site on the next day, with numerous volunteers, to help clean. Matt Backhouse, SCAD Operations Director and the flood shelter director, tells us we can bring a limited number of animals back with us, if necessary. We select dogs in extremely bad shape, one with no back legs and a prolapsed penis.

A five-person team returns to the temple sanctuary: Matt Backhouse, SCAD Operations Director and the flood shelter director; Katherine, a WSPA veterinarian from Flordia; Toni, a veterinary nurse from New Zealand; and Kinship Circle team members June Towler (top photo) and Tracie Dawson (bottom photo, both from Canada.

Upon arrival we instigate a team assessment…and victory! We sucessfully convince temple staff to let us transfer all cats from perilous upstairs quaters to their own cattery established on the lower level.

An estimated 50 volunteers, plus army personnel, show up to aid in clean-up — with teams allocated to clean a downstairs area we select as the new cattery. Thai women volunteers are phenomenally hard workers! We fence in the cattery and rig a door to keep dogs out.

To move hundreds of cats from the upper level, we carefully untie suspended cages. One slip and a confined cat could drop into the swamp below. Each kitty is ferried through a glut of dogs and feces to a small, slimy metal staircase with no handrail. Loss of balance is not an option, as the stairs end in knee-deep sludge on one side. In addition to muck, myriad dogs line the staircase…so we lower crated cats by rope.

There are so many cages that we eventually form a chain of hands to cautiously move cats down the steps. Amazingly, no humans or felines fall during the tedious operation.

A bleach-and-soap overhaul of newly designated cat quarters is cut short when a Thai leader tells us that soap run-off is "polluting" the courtyard swamp and could make dogs sick. While difficult to abide by misinformed decisions, we adhere to culture and politics rather than risk permission to help these animals altogether. Fortunately we’ve already completed cleanser usage, so it is no longer an issue.

As we finalize cattery set-up, one of the local caretakers dumps dog food on the floor surrounding the cats! It becomes apparent that our primary concern to separate cats from dogs is misunderstood. Though we explain that the presence of loose dogs in the cattery is unsafe and stressful for cats, they do not agree.

Our vets check as many injured animals as possible in a temporary field treatment site we erect in an open-sided pavillion. As nightfall descends, Kinship Circle’s Tracie and June hold two mini flashlights to assist veterinarians Toni and Katherine.

With the most vulnerable animals transported and checked-in to the flood shelter back in Bangkok, we finally return to our hotel. The day has been long, hot, emotional and frustrating. Still, we feel it is a job well-done under trying circumstances.

Vet Katherine Polak (left) and veterinary nurse Toni (right) ride in SCAD Foundation’s truck with a SCAD-Kinship Circle team that returns to the temple sanctuary to evaluate animal medical conditions. Photo: (c) Kinship Circle, Thailand Flood 2011 / June Towler

At the emergency flood shelter in Bangkok — a donated industrial site in the Muang District, Samut Prakan — we clean poop, pee and germs. We feed, water and catch enterprising dogs who make a break, but wind up roaming the complex. They know good digs when they find them: Plenty of food, water and love! Escapees eagerly greet us curbside, as we pull in to the shelter early each morning.

At the emergency flood shelter in Bangkok — a donated industrial site in the Muang District, Samut Prakan — we clean poop, pee and germs. We feed, water and catch enterprising dogs who make a break, but wind up roaming the complex. They know good digs when they find them: Plenty of food, water and love! Escapees eagerly greet us curbside, as we pull in to the shelter early each morning.

Shelter director Matt Backhouse, of SCAD Foundation (in photo above left), enlists Kinship Circle’s Tracie Dawson and June Towler, plus volunteer Pong, for retrieval of shelter dogs on the lamb. Two breakout artists flee into grassy fields by a water tower overlooking a canal. Pong and Matt scale a fence topped in barbed wire to access the enclosed area. We successfully recover the beautiful white Shepherd mix dog. He is snarling angry, but calms down once crated. A second dog is corralled outside the fence, where June manages to snag him. Tracie will rig an old trap with missing parts to retrieve the rest of the dogs.

Tomorrow, 30 more temporarily sheltered dogs will leave. Tracie and June will arrive even earlier to round-up problematic escapees and help run a shelter now sparsely populated with volunteers.

Kinship Circle volunteer Stephanie Naftal is on puppy patrol at emergency shelter. Photo: (c) Kinship Circle, Thailand Flood 2011 / June Towler