Miranda in Sri Lanka

[Clive]

I had a press release from WSPA that Miranda has done her trip to Sri Lanka and I have a video and HQ pic of her trip.

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ACTRESS MIRANDA RICHARDSON SPEAKS ABOUT HER RECENT VISIT TO SRI LANKA FOR ANIMAL CHARITY WSPA

DATE AVAILABLE: Wed 12th December 2007
WEB VIDEO: Available free of charge and free from copyright restrictions.


Wed 12th December 2007: Acclaimed Oscar-nominated actress Miranda Richardson speaks about her trip to Sri Lanka earlier this month for the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), to witness their animal welfare work with stray dogs.
Miranda, a dog owner herself and a committed supporter of WSPA, visited a mobile clinic set up in an underprivileged area of Colombo to see first-hand the work that they do. She also visited the coastal region of Hikkaduwa south of Colombo, which was devastated by the Boxing Day tsunami three years ago, and met locals whose dogs were helped by the Blue Paw Trust in the aftermath.
This emotive webvideo shows the conditions in which many dogs are forced to live in Sri Lanka, and the pioneering work of the Blue Paw Trust and WSPA vets to both help these animals, as well as help the local communities.

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The video is starting to pop up on a couple of sites, and I will put an embedded version on the website soon.
If you want to see the higher resolution version (WMV format), and the picture, try these links: -

www.miranda-richardson.com/1506_wspa_web_video.wmv
www.miranda-richardson.com/miranda%20richardsonstill.JPG
Preview of the HQ

[Mandy]

thank uuuuuu very much!!!

[Rita, Oh Yes!]

Thankyou so much for this. Words cannot express just how much I lover this woman

also i cannot figure out who is cuter in that picture, her or the puppy

[Libitine]

lol Rita.
aw! that is so cute!
so nice of her.

[Lady van Tassel]

Haha I think they're equal
It's so nice of her to do that.Seeing stray dogs actually makes me cry.When we visited Thailand last year,there were loads of them wandering around and when we went to this restuarant for dinner,a little puppy just like that one she's holding sat down in front of me.It was so skinny and one of the legs seemed to be broken (probably from getting kicked by the restaurant owner ) and well... I just burst out crying.All I wanted was to bring it home and take care of it,but we couldn't do that of course.It makes me so sad now to realise that doggy probably isn't alive anymore.

[EarlyBird]

Aw hopefully it got rescued and is warm snuggled up at home with a big belly now

[Lady van Tassel]

I wish I could have helped it somehow

[Lane of Magic]

Awwww!!!! That pic is so utterly sweet!! *melts*

[Lady van Tassel]

It is!
I kind of wish I was the puppy right now lol

[Libitine]

aw.
i rescued a kitten from the street.
she's my baby stray and i love her to death!

[ladygiry]

That picture makes me squee!


All 3 of our cats are strays. Our two oldest are brother and sister and we got them when they were kittens but our other cat we found at a campsite a year later. His owners just dumped him off and it's a shame because he's so very loveable. Oh well, their loss was our gain.

[Lady van Tassel]

Aww.I'd love to rescue stray animals.My mum knows somebody who spent several years travelling around the world to rescue stray animals and bring them home.

[toddwharton]

I support Miranda's animal rights' cause. What she does is admirable and we need people like her
to travel and headline the treatment of animals. I have one point to add here - look at the conditions of the people in these foreign, Third World, countries. While people are poor, they cannot easily be kind to animals. We need to demonstrate our kindness to other people first, and then kindness to animals will be easier to accomplish. Poverty is not a well-spring to kindness.

[Rita, Oh Yes!]

If you watch the video included with this post, you'll see the exact opposite is true. The people in Sri Lanka are very kind to the dogs - they consider the dogs 'theirs' as in belonging to the community, and they do the best they can to look after them. The Blue Paw Trust is about educating people about the right way to care for animals, and providing the services needed.

I agree that people are also important, but Miranda supports animals because she feels they need the support. She usually goes for the underdog (no pun intended), and I think she supports the WSPA and a rather low-profile animal welfare problem like stray dogs in Sri Lanka because she thinks they need the publicity more. It's like her documentary 'Final Chance to Save', in which she is a spokeswoman for a rare, endangered breed of Limur. She says in that that she was 'offered tigers', but that everyone knows about tigers and she wants to support the little guy. There are far more charities for helping people than there are for animals, and there's also the thing where most of what has happened to animals has happened because of human activity and destruction.

[callygirl]

Rita makes a lot of good points. We can't say that we will help animals once we have sorted all the 'people' problems, because being realistic that's not going to happen in any of our lifetimes.

People and animal welfare have to run side by side, and often animal welfare causes are neglected or under publicised. We are interdependent with the animal kingdom a lot more than we realise, and a failure to address their problems will also impact significantly on ours.