The Elephant Nature Park is a safe haven for many animals and there are cats and dogs everywhere. Up at the main building cats and dogs wander around freely and they are so well behaved, there are so many tourists that visit and yet they go around minding their own business, which usually means sleeping all over the place. Although some of them in particular like to get their tummies rubbed or their ears tickled.
One of the staff doing cat therapy with cats.
Cosying up together
Anyone for a ride!
These two were always cuddling up together, here one is using the other as a pillow.
I don't know who looks saddest here, David or the dog who is called Lucky. Lucky took a shine to David but she is actually the founders dog, so is not homeless.
There is also a herd of buffalo at the park, we suddenly saw them coming towards us when we were on the skywalk. They went under the platform and headed into the water and into the field on the other side. It was great to see and the noise was amazing of them all walking below us. They also have a mahout who followed them into the river.
This dog loved sleeping here, it is under the tea and coffee pots.
There are so many dogs at the centre because in 2011 there was terrible flooding in Bangkok which saw many dogs being abandoned by their owners. The owners of the park heard of their plight so headed there and ended up rescuing over 400 of them. When everything had calmed down and returned to normal they posted pictures of the pets and waited for them to be claimed but very few did. So they still have some of these dogs but have also ended up with more, as people now know they will take dogs so sometimes they find them abandoned at the gate.
Apart from the dogs who live at the main building there are many more that live in kennels and runs at the dog centre in the park, if we had spare time we could go and help there too. We did go and walk the dogs on one of the days, some of the volunteers with us spent more time there than with the elephants. A lot of the dogs are up for adoption.
The cats, dogs and elephants which did roam freely all seemed to get on nicely. Although there was a couple of funny incidents between them. When we did the elephant walk one of the dogs kept barking at one of the elephants who started off ignoring it, when the dog continued the elephant kicked its leg at it, the dog scampered off but returned and started barking again, this time the elephant took a swipe with its trunk, the dog scampered off then returned and started barking again, at that the elephant did a mini charge of a couple of steps towards it, at that the dog left.
At times the elephants get fed at the platform where the tourists are, when this happens the elephants put their trunks through the railings and get the food, one elephant put his trunk through the railing sniffed around the ground and came into contact with a sleeping cat I don't know who got the bigger fright the elephant or the cat. The funniest scene though was seeing one of the baby elephants chasing one of the cats around the area.
An amazing thing was that apart from the elephants there was no poop lying around. The animals were obviously very well trained.
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