From Kilkenny to Sri Lanka: Meet the vet nurse helping to care for three million street dogs
Sarah Rochford decided to apply for a job as a vet nurse in Sri Lanka after seeing a post on Facebook.
A Kilkenny woman who moved to Sri Lanka last summer to work as a veterinary nurse described how it felt like she was “regressing back into her teens” after living at home with her parents in Ireland.
Sarah Rochford, aged 37, said she had always been travelling and had only moved back home to live with her family in Kilkenny after the covid pandemic.
“I was renting and then living at home, and I felt like I was regressing back into my teens,” she told the . “I had eventually saved up for a deposit, but once I saw the first house, I just could not do it.
“I was weighing things up, and it felt like signing up for a mortgage was signing up for a lifetime. I just did not know if I wanted to do that,” Ms Rochford added.
Ms Rochford said she decided to apply for a job as a vet nurse in Sri Lanka after seeing a post on Facebook.
“I did not know anything before I came here,” Ms Rochford said, “but I always knew I wanted to travel.”
She now works in a mobile unit for a charity on the south coast of Sri Lanka, looking after street dogs. WeCare, the charity, was established 11 years ago by British veterinarian Dr Janey Lowes, who was backpacking in Sri Lanka in May 2014.
According to the charity, while these dogs love their freedom and often have a safe place to sleep and a guardian who feeds them, the real problem that stray dogs face in Sri Lanka is the lack of access to “even the most basic of veterinary care”.
The charity helps catch and neuter stray dogs. Sri Lanka has some three million stray dogs, according to Ms Rochford, and the goal of the mobile unit is “no rabies, no babies”.
“We’re tipping away, and we give these animals a UK standard of care,” Ms Rochford said. “We catch them, neuter and vaccinate them before releasing them, and that’s our work down in the mobile van.”
The 37-year-old added that she could see herself in Sri Lanka “for the foreseeable”.
“But it was easy enough to adapt to the lifestyle and local culture here. The fruit is unbelievable, it is so fresh and tasty. However, I do miss curry chips and salt and vinegar crisps,” Ms Rochford added.
She said that while she does not make Irish wages in Sri Lanka, the cost of living is quite low, and that the country had a “better way of living”.
“They live day to day, there is no set goal,” Ms Rochford said. “I do miss home the odd time, and the longer I am away, it is hard to keep in touch with day-to-day life of people back home.
“I do miss my family, my mam, the cat, but I also do love it here.”
