‘Pet passion a costly affair, not for faint-hearted’

Packing the meals neatly, she drives to Sri Sathya Sai Prani Seva, a shelter for street dogs and other abandoned creatures that she runs on ECR. On Thursday, she again took on the task of cooking nearly 40 kg of biryani, as her maid was unwell. Halfway through her cooking, she receives a guest—someone wanting to rent a house. 

“My family will not be joining me, so I need only a small place. My budget is only Rs 5,000 a month. Can you..” as the man hesitates, wondering if she would take a small job, Prabha readily agrees to find him a place as early as possible. 

“I do not turn away any realty work. People have been playing a waitand-watch game when it comes to investing in real estate. The brokerage charges I received for every tenancy or sale, goes to feed my poor dogs,” she explains. Prabha says many people are sensitised to abandoned animals, these days. “However, this is an expensive social equity,” she says. 

“A shelter for pets costs thousands of rupees. You being with one pet and very soon you end up with a hundred, because the sheer number of abandoned pets, or street dogs and cats are huge in a city like Chennai,” she points out. 

Prabha reckons she spends an average of Rs 37, 000 a month on food for the animals, rent and staff salaries. “This is the bare minimum for a shelter like mine. When I last counted, I had over 200 animals, and the census was quite a while ago,” she adds. 

Even as more people are turning socially responsible and rescuing animals, the cost of running the shelters is going up, she adds. Sri Sathya Sai Prani Seva was started in the year 2000 when Prabha rescued her first pet from a street in T Nagar. The pup’s tail was full of tar, (the road was being relaid) and Prabha took Manasa as she named it, home. Soon, more street dogs had a way of finding their way to her shelter. 

“ Running an animal shelter is a 24x7 job. Each time I think of closing it, someone calls me saying my story has inspired them.,” adds Prabha. “All of us love dogs, only some of us are unaware of  it,” she says.