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Home > WSPA's Work > Education > Training Programs Training Programs
Pet Respect Programme WSPA’s Pet Respect Programme is working throughout the world to promote responsible pet ownership and to end the terrible cruelty inflicted on millions of stray animals. • Registration and identification (collar tags or micro-chips) For many years, WSPA has played a leading role in opposing such cruelty and promoting the development of sustained and humane systems of stray population control. Inhumane Methods of Stray Population Control Stray animals around the world are brutally caught and killed by a variety of inhumane methods including: • Shooting Through a combination of ignorance, poverty and neglect, authorities often resort to a knee-jerk policy of indiscriminately rounding up and killing vast numbers of strays in a futile attempt to control their numbers. Stray Dogs In many countries, stray dogs are a common sight, congregating in populated areas and scavenging for scraps of food and attention from passers by. There are an estimated half a billion dogs in the world and uncontrolled breeding and human neglect have led to a population explosion of stray dogs, with over 80% of the world‘s dogs thought to be strays. Cat Cafés Cat cafés are designated feeding stations for stray cats. These have proven particularly effective in the control of cat populations in tourist areas. They were introduced in Tunisia in the mid 1980s and, since then, WSPA has been actively promoting their installation in areas of high stray cat populations. The rationale behind cat cafés is very simple. Tourist areas and hotels attract cats, as they will congregate where they know there is food. Cat cafés are established in hotel grounds to keep them from becoming a nuisance to residents and holidaymakers alike. They provide an ideal location for cat populations to be monitored and for vaccinations and neutering to be undertaken. Mobile Veterinary Clinic In many countries, veterinary care for companion animals is restricted to a lucky few. Mobile veterinary clinics can bring essential veterinary care and a neutering service to where it is most needed. These clinics can also bring education on responsible animal ownership and animal care to hard to reach or under-privileged areas. Typically, WSPA will recommend a programme that is a combination of the following: • Humane catching and handling As well as assisting in these areas, WSPA also helps to fund a variety of grass roots projects aimed at helping local people and member societies to help animals directly. One way of doing this is by providing highly effective and low-cost mobile vet clinics. Other innovative approaches range from bicycles or even motorbikes being used to ferry dogs back and forth for treatment and such projects are complemented by an ongoing series of practical training workshops and conferences that WSPA helps governments to arrange. 
WSPA launched the ‘Concepts in Animal Welfare’ syllabus in 2000 to encourage the teaching of animal welfare to veterinary students. Colleges in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe are now working to adopt this programme. We hope that this resource will play an important part in helping veterinarians of the future to develop a greater understanding of the welfare of animals by stimulating focused critical thinking on welfare issues, not only during their veterinary course but throughout their veterinary career. For a copy of the syllabus please contact John Callahan, WSPA Director of Education and Training, on +44 (0)207 7587 5042 or email johncallahan@wspa.org.uk.
Horses and donkeys are a vital form of transport for millions of people and their goods. Throughout the world WSPA is seeking to ensure that working animals are not forced to be beasts of burden and are provided with adequate food, water and veterinary health care. WSPA is working to ensure that individuals responsible for working animals know how to care for them properly and have the right equipment for the tasks they are undertaking. This is a challenging proposition as people who use equines as working animals are often among the poorest in society. In this situation, animals are forced to work as hard as possible just so their owners can pay for life’s basic needs. Global Equine Projects WSPA aims to show that taking proper care of working animals is in the best interest of both animals and their owners. Through a range of projects, WSPA is working to ensure that individuals responsible for working animals know how to care for them properly and have the right equipment for the tasks they are undertaking. Afghanistan The owners of working equines in Afghanistan have no veterinary services available to them. Equines are overworked in extremely hot temperatures during the summer and have no water facilities, following the wars with Russia and the USA. The country is very poor and the people rely upon their equines for their livehood. WSPA, is jointly funding and overseeing a project to tackle the core problems through providing veterinary services, training of farriers and education of owners, which will improve the welfare status of hundreds of thousands of working equines in Afghanistan. Thailand - Lampang Horses Lampang has an equine population of approx 400 carriage horses. Research at Michigan State University has shown that this breed is unique to Lampang. Poor diet has resulted in malnutrition and disease resulting in severe lameness and head swelling and in some cases bone fractures. Lack of minerals is the core problem. Local vets have no knowledge in treating equines allowing the problem to go unchecked. A low cost calcium supplement has been purchased and is sold on to the owners at cost price. Workshops have been held for the owners on nutrition and on farriery. Owners have been given feeding charts and become members to receive veterinary treatment and to buy the minerals. Mongolia Horse Project Following a run of severe winters and drought summers, Mongolia has suffered massive losses of livestock and horses (6 million). Many of these animals would have survived if provided with preventative treatment. A successful pilot project was run in 2004 treating 24,000 equines and livestock. Mongolia is a very poor country and each province is only allocated a small amount of anti parasitic medicine, which is used mainly on the smaller livestock. A lot of the nomadic herders use traditional herbal remedies, which have little or no effect. WSPA is working to provide preventative treatment and veterinary services through local vets, to relieve suffering and reduce equine and livestock fatalities experienced during the winters. In Colombia, a law was introduced in 2002 banning the use of cart-horses from all major cities. This impacted the lives of thousands of horses used for transporting materials in the country. In Colombia ‘s sprawling capital city, Bogotá, there were thought to be at least 15,000 working horses. WSPA operates a large rescue centre for abandoned and neglected horses from Bogotá where many of Colombia‘s working horses end up. The animals are treated until they are healthy, when they are then allowed to roam in green pastures. As suitable new owners are found, most of the horses are re-homed outside of the city area. Zimbabwe In Zimbabwe, WSPA is supporting a scheme run by the Donkey Sanctaury which runs a shelter for donkeys and organises free clinics throughout the country. Latin America In Latin America, WSPA helps run an active programme of clinics and training workshops to which owners bring their horses for veterinary treatment, while at the same time learning how to care better for their animals. | ||
Concepts in Animal Welfare
Working for equines