More on Dichato...

Well Erik pretty much covered what we did in Dichato. What an amazing experience it was! It was really shocking to see the degree of damage still remaining in the town 2 months after the tsunami, and hard to imagine what the people had gone through, and in fact continue to suffer through as they remain in a state of limbo living in tents in the cold weather. The army is building small huts for people for the winter, and we heard that last weekend some were ready for people to move into...so hopefully things have improved somewhat for them. But still...it is hard to imagine that all these families lost everything, their photographs and special memoirs, most importantly, but even the material things that now they will have to buy all over again, and with nothing left to start their businesses in- I really don’t know how they are surviving.

As for the dogs, there are more than I have ever seen in one area! They are everywhere! And most of them are intact males, so there were a lot of fights while we were there. I can’t imagine what is going to happen when the females start coming into heat, because there is nowhere to confine them to protect them from all the males.

So we are going back next weekend. We are making plans right now for teams to spread out to new areas and vaccinate more dogs, and for other teams that know the town better- like Roberto from Dichato, to try and find the puppies that we vaccinated the first time around to give them their booster.

I recently heard that one of the dogs that had confirmed distemper was euthanized by a colleague who was in Dichato last weekend. His symptoms were just too severe, and there were no signs of improvement. This distemper outbreak just adds insult to injury for some of these people that have nothing but their pets for comfort...

I’ve attached a few pictures for you to see, but also encourage you to visit our friend- Carlos Johnson’s website with more photos of us working in Dichato, and also a section on the damage that we saw from the tsunami, and of people living in the camps- they are really amazing photos! www.carlosjvfotos.com/vsf and www.carlosjvfotos.com/dichato

Here we go:

Eating breakfast at Roberto’s family’s house:Dogs hanging out / waiting?? on the dock where the beach front buildings used to be:

Checking dogs over prior to their vaccine:

Roberto Orrego and I working on a cute little cocker:

People arrived from outside the camps with all their dogs:

Dr. Patricia Pérez and Guillermo working together on a particularly difficult dog:

Dichato...used to be a quaint little beachfront tourist town:

Women getting their daily drinking water:

The camps:

This man was delivering mattresses to people in tents, and you can see us working in the background:

Cars piled up in the middle of the street that were destroyed in the tsunami:

The destruction:

But nothing can stop the Chileans from playing soccer!!!

Here we are at the end of a long weekend:

When you see something as beautiful as this little girl, in the midst of such despair and destruction...how could one give up! We’ll let you know how the next trip goes....