SCAD/Soi Dog Foundation merger falls through
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2012:
SCAD/Soi Dog Foundation merger falls through
BANGKOK— -Soi Cat & Dog Rescue, of Bangkok, and the Soi Dog Foundation, of Phuket, will not merge after all, SCAD advisory committee chair Annelize Booysen announced on May 19, 2012. The two leading expatriate-founded humane societies in Thailand had jointly announced a merger on February 28, 2012.
“Despite the announcement,” Booysen said, “we have not been able to successfully conclude our merger. The Soi Dog Foundation will proceed with their expansion plans in Bangkok without SCAD and we wish them all the best. This development has forced us to take a very long and hard look at SCAD,” Booysen continued, describing SCAD as “an overstretched team with overstretched finances.”
With no other prospect of a bailout in sight, “We had to make the extremely difficult but inevitable decision that the time has come for SCAD to close,” Booysen said. “We will be winding down our operations over the next two months. We plan to vacate our center at Sukhumvit at the end of June, and then wrap up at Bang Bo towards the end of July. Our first priority is to find suitable homes for all the animals in our care. We are making very good progress,” Booysen concluded.
Soi Dog Foundation director John Dalley told ANIMAL PEOPLE that he and Booysen had drafted a mutually accepted memorandum of understanding to govern the proposed merger, but the SCAD board scuttled it by trying to retain control of funding and the donor list, and by seeking to have the Soi Dog Foundation purchase used veterinary equipment from SCAD which Dalley considered not worth buying.
Instead, Dalley said, Soi Dog Foundation will take over the location and equipment of Treat with Responsibility and Empathy all Animals in Thailand, opened in 2011 by Soi Dog Foundation founder Margot Park, who left SDF in 2005.
“Our Bangkok general manager is currently running mobile clinics with private vets and Thai volunteers,” Dalley said. “Our aim is to have SDF Bangkok as a very much Thai-managed-and-run operation. We are currently advertising for two additional vets to be trained on Phuket and then transferred to Bangkok. This will make six vets in total employed by the Soi Dog Foundation,” which “will focus entirely on sterilization and treatment,” Dalley pledged. “No shelter will be built.”
Dalley was optimistic that a Prevent Unwanted Puppies program on Phuket, partially funded by the British charity Dogs Trust, will accomplish 20,000 sterilizations on Phuket over the next two years. “This will, I believe, see Phuket under control and enable us to focus more on Bangkok where the problem is massive,” Dalley said.
