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Animal Rahat UpdateFebruary-June 2007Animal Rahat ("rahat" means relief) is a nonprofit organization, and PETA is helping Animal Rahat to expand its services. Most working animals in India belong to people who cannot afford to provide even a minimal standard of care for animals and who have not been taught how to do so. Bullocks, horses, camels, and donkeys suffer from poor nutrition—sometimes eating only weeds, for example—as well as dehydration, untreated sores, overloading, injuries, and even beatings. The two biggest problems are lameness and depression: Debilitated and despairing animals lose the will to carry on, eat very little of the small amount of food they are given, and suffer beatings in order to keep them going.Staffed by a team of well-trained veterinarians and their assistants, Animal Rahat offers vital relief to these animals. The program helps their owners, who often don't have enough money to meet animals' basic nutritional requirements. Animal Rahat often pays owners a few rupees so that they can repair a broken harness or get medicine to treat animals' serious illnesses or injuries. Rahat also teaches people about basic animal welfare, including fundamental, practical measures—for example, the importance of providing real fodder rather than contaminated scrub and giving animals working in the heat enough water so that they won't collapse. Carts full of passengers or commodities such as bricks can weigh thousands of pounds, so it is crucial to teach people to reduce and balance the loads that animals are forced to pull along rutted tracks. After being founded in 2003 and starting with just one treatment station, the program now has 63 treatment stations—41 in Solapur and 22 in Sangli (two districts in Maharashtra, which is one of the largest and most populous states in India). Animal Rahat started with just two employees and has grown to include a staff of eight. The Rahat veterinarians started out treating between 10 and 15 animals per day, and now the average number of animals treated daily is almost 50! In May 2007, Animal Rahat was given an ambulance as a donation from the Reserve Bank of India. This vehicle will greatly improve Animal Rahat's ability to transport medicine and equipment. Other wonderful signs of growth this year include the opening of three more treatment stations and the purchase of land for a new animal-retirement sanctuary. In addition to the daily routes between villages to cover all the treatment stations, Rahat has also established a tetanus vaccination "camp," where people can get their animals vaccinated for free. In this report, we list a few of the many achievements that Animal Rahat has made from February to June 2007. In celebration of Animal Rahat's four-year anniversary, the staff distributed treats—two bananas and a bundle of fresh green grass for each animal and a samosa for each owner who sought treatment for his or her animal. 
A bullock enjoys the tasty grass given in celebration of Animal Rahat's fourth anniversary. The animals rarely get anything this fresh and green.
At the beginning of the year, the Rahat staff prepared for the annual Chinchani Fair (a goddess festival). The Chinchani Fair is a traumatic time for bullocks because whole families pile into carts and force the animals to run for two days en route to the fair. Because this routine causes extreme stress, exhaustion, and injury to the bullocks, the Rahat vets doubled their efforts to persuade people to take buses to the festival instead. This year, more than 400 people went in Rahat's seven hired buses, which means that more than 70 bullocks were spared horrible pain and were given much-needed rest while their families were away. For the bullocks who were not so lucky, the Rahat team set up a relief station at the site of the fair, providing water, "stress kits" (vitamins that help bullocks withstand the symptoms of being overworked), and bottles of pain-relieving liniment to almost 1,200 bullocks. In recent months in the Solapur region, the Rahat vets have not encountered a single case of foot-and-mouth disease. This is a vast improvement over last year, when foot-and-mouth disease was pervasive in the region. This drastic change illustrates the Rahat team's success in convincing people to get their animals vaccinated. 
A constant problem for bullocks, horses, and donkeys is that they are forced to pull or carry a lot of weight. Fortunately, Rahat's teachings against overloading animals have sunk in so much that people sometimes intervene in an animal's behalf. Recently, a kind soul who saw a man force a bullock to carry about 3,500 pounds of steel in his cart stopped the owner and called Animal Rahat. A Rahat vet immediately reached the scene and explained to the owner how harmful this was to the bullock. He persuaded the man to reduce the load and allow the bullock to rest after treating the animal for stress and exhaustion. In addition to regularly giving talks at the treatment stations about the hazards of overloading carts, the Rahat staff also pulls people over on the road to address this problem. For example, upon seeing one overloaded bullock, the vets stopped the owner and explained that a bullock can only carry 1.5 times his body weight without injury. When the owner seemed skeptical, the vets politely asked him to try carrying 1.5 times his weight. The man accepted the challenge and quickly got the point! He then removed part of the load and put it in a separate cart. Onlooking bullock owners took note as well. 
The bullocks in the above photo, named Hanmya and Phakdya, must pull an extremely heavy grain-harvesting machine. During harvesting season, Phakdya became lame from being overworked, and his owner asked Animal Rahat to treat him. The Rahat vets treated Phakdya and recommended that he rest for four days. The owner expressed concern that he would lose more than 400 rupees for each day that Phakdya rested. The vets then explained the dire consequences to Phakdya that would result without sufficient time to heal and offered to pay the owner what he would earn during those four days. Upon hearing this, the owner politely refused the offer, saying that the fact that Animal Rahat was providing free treatment was sufficient payment. He then gave Phakdya a four-day rest, allowing him to recover fully. 
The harness worn by the horse in this photo exemplifies an all-too-common practice: People craft harnesses out of salvaged material when they are too poor to buy an adequate harness. These makeshift harnesses often cause chafing wounds and other injuries. In an effort to combat this problem, Animal Rahat offers to pay a local harness maker to repair harnesses at no charge to the owners, thereby assuring that owners do not need to resort to constructing injurious harnesses like this one. A very important aspect of Animal Rahat is its animal-retirement program. Often, long-suffering cart animals are sold for slaughter—which is generally performed without stunning and following an unbearably long journey—when they become too old or ill to work. As an alternative, the Rahat staff encourages owners to allow animals to continue living with their families until they die so that their remaining years can be enjoyed free from work and pain and so that they will be spared the terror and agony of the slaughterhouse. To lessen the expenses incurred by owners when they are not earning money with their bullocks, Animal Rahat pays for part of the animals' feeding expenses if the retired animals are kept with their owners. There are currently 10 retired animals who are living with their families because of Rahat's influence. If owners do not have enough money to keep their bullocks after they become too old to work, Rahat encourages owners to turn their animals over to Rahat instead of selling them for slaughter. Two more bullocks have recently joined the retirement program, which means that 20 animals are now living at the two Rahat retirement facilities and will never be overloaded again. Animal Rahat sponsors make this program for India's working animals possible. Thank you!
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