Auroville Dog Shelter

The Auroville Dog Shelter (ADS) team was replaced without explanation via an Office Order issued on 30 August 2025. The GB and AVFO plan to build a VIP road directly through the shelter and through three established Auroville farms.

The Auroville Dog Shelter has warned that rabies continues to be present in the Auroville area. Due to budget constraints, it is unable to renew the 1500 dog and cat vaccinations it did last year and is also forced to halt its successful “1000-dog-in-a-year” sterilisation programme, which, it warns, will lead to an exponential increase in the number of puppies in the entire area.

Auroville’s Dog Shelter is facing a breakdown of its services, a crisis directly triggered by a recent decision by the AVF auditors to ban crowdfunding in Auroville.

Citing cases of animal neglect and abuse, the Auroville Dog Shelter team has invited Auroville residents and friends of Auroville to participate in the writing of an Auroville Animal Charter, which should become a framework for how to live in a harmonious co-existence with all sentient beings in Auroville.

On 20 March, the Ministry of Education, responding to two Right to Information requests dated 25 and 26 February, sent the applicant a copy of the Minutes of the 68th Meeting of the Governing Board (GB) of the Auroville Foundation held on 5 December 2024, which have since been widely distributed in Auroville.

Merry, born in Vermont, USA, passed away on 30 March. She was 85. She officially joined Auroville in 1999, but was already involved 10 years earlier.

The Auroville dog shelter has been receiving an increasing number of desperate calls to save abandoned new-born puppies. However, as the dog shelter is at maximum capacity and is regularly flooded by heavy monsoon rains, help cannot be provided.

An Auroville health scare started some weeks ago, when three aggressive dogs were reported in and around the Auroville grounds. The Auroville Dog Shelter was on call, and was able to collect and quarantine all three dogs.

The rescue team of the Auroville Dog Shelter caught inside Transition School a black female dog that acted extremely aggressively and displayed signs of a possible rabies infection.

The Auroville Dog Shelter, home to nearly 300 rescued dogs, urgently needs financial support. Despite being a municipal service, it receives only Rs. 50,000 per month from the Budget Coordination Committee, far short of the Rs. 3 lakh needed for basic expenses like food, wages, vital medicines and vaccinations.

The planned VIP road will also pass through the existing Auroville dog shelter. The dog shelter team were happy to inform the community that after productive discussions, a compromise could be worked out in which the new access road will be built without destroying any dog enclosures or important infrastructure of the shelter.

The Auroville dog shelter team issued a warning that it is only dedicated to rescuing dogs that can no longer survive on the streets due to illness, age, or accidents and that the shelter’s current capacity does not allow it to accommodate healthy puppies which people find on the streets.

The Auroville Youth Center’s (YC) annual gathering, themed this year as the ‘Find Yourself Festival’, took place on 16-18 December. The community was invited ‘to come together to celebrate in a safe, joyful, and playful space for the realization of human unity.’

Integrated Animal Care Centre (IACC) was started in 2005. It is a legacy of Ann Plummer. She was known as “Animal Care Ann” as she used to give food and look after stray dogs and cats.