[Monday Motivation] Meet the dog lover who has rescued and treated over 20k strays in Jodhpur

Jodhpur-based cyber security professional Kuldeep Khatri was a passionate dog lover since childhood. In 2014, he came across a dog that met with an accident and there was no one to help.

Kuldeep immediately went to its rescue and tried taking the dog to about 20-odd government shelters and hospitals in the city, and he could only see the lack of facilities and services offered in these places.

“That night, I roamed the streets with a dog bleeding in my arms. Minutes turned into hours, but I couldn’t find any help. Seeing him so helpless broke my heart. That was the day my pity for the voiceless turned into a passion,” says Kuldeep.

Kuldeep decided to help the street dogs by working in a government shelter home. He got involved in its developmental activities by arranging food and doctors. However, he was asked to leave as he was not allowed to make infrastructural changes in the government organisations.

This is when he formed Dog Home Foundation in 2021 along with Dr Kalu Ram Chowdhary and Pramod Sankhla.

The Jodhpur-based organisation was started with an aim to save the helpless and stray dogs, and to bring a smile to these creatures.

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Forming a home

The trio started treating street dogs and cats in the street while they were yet to arrange a space. However, Kuldeep soon converted the land he had purchased to build a farmhouse into a shelter home.

Kuldeep says that he and his team had nothing but a small land, and they decided to make it a hotspot for dogs. But soon it started to get rescue calls from around which helped their pending work to grow unexpectedly. Eventually, Dog Home Foundation was registered and set up in 2021.

Today, the team has a total of about 50 members. In the last one year, Kuldeep’s foundation claims to have attended 20,000 cases, with about 100 rescue calls daily.

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Helping animals

While the Dog Home Foundation was initially started to help dogs and cats, today the foundation is helping other animals such as cows and camels.

Working 24*7 for these stray dogs, the foundation works in two shifts -- i.e. from 11 am to 7 pm, and from 7 pm to 3 am, with a nursing staff of five people in each shift.

The organisation offers ambulance facilities round the clock, and has an X-ray machine, blood test facility, and other medical equipment that are made available for injured dogs for free of cost.

Kuldeep also has invested in a hydrotherapy machine. As per Kuldeep, the machine, which can help paralysed dogs to stand on their legs, costs more than Rs 33 lakh.

After launching the Dog Home Foundation, they were able to make more than 1,800 paralysed dogs to stand again and live a normal life.

“We are a hospital programme and not really a shelter programme. Only complicated cases and those who cannot survive on their own are brought to our shelter. The rest are treated and let out to their own places,” says Kuldeep, adding the major cause for animal injuries are road accidents.

About 30 percent of the costs -- food and medicines -- are managed via public funding and from crowdfunding platforms such as Impact Guru. Remaining funds are brought in by the founders themselves.

“As a team, we wish to give the animals a good life,” says Kuldeep.

The Dog Home Foundation is set to open ten hotspots in Jodhpur in the coming months where they will provide free milk and food. It also wishes to work on animal birth control programmes in the future.