MANILA, Philippines - Luke Gamble goes across the globe to help animals in dire need of medical attention on the new show, Luke Gamble’s Vet Adventures. His is a travel adventure of an entirely different kind: encounters with animals, and the humans who care for them.
Deep in remote India, he battles to save a cow and resorts to a heroic operation to try to save its life. In Grenada in the southern Caribbean, he sets up a field clinic in a hurricane-ravaged area, island-hopping to attend to emergency cases. He helps release a sea turtle caught in a fisherman’s net, and discovers the truth about the plight of these wonderful but endangered creatures. Luke is then immersed in the challenge of working for the only domestic animal charity in Malawi, a country that has hardly any vets, and travels to a national park where he goes tracking in the bush and gets introduced to a troop of over-familiar baboons!
Moral dilemmas face vets everyday; in Pokhara, Nepal’s third largest city, he gets straight to work tackling the country’s animal welfare issues, particularly the neglectful treatment of the working equines that traipse up and down the small mountain paths all day long. In Mexico, he works at a local dog and cat shelter, then when he arrives in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, he assists at a dog shelter that is overwhelmed with animals and desperate for veterinary help, and visits a hill tribe village where he meets a Buddhist monk, living in isolation on the hilltop, who rescues injured chickens that have been used for fighting. He also tries to help some elephants that have trodden on landmines while working in illegal logging camps. In Lusaka, the bustling capital city of Zambia, he goes on patrol across town to crack down on the illegal practice of selling puppies on the streets.
Luke Gamble’s Vet Adventures on Animal Planet airs every Tuesday at 9 p.m. beginning Feb. 8. The show encores on Sunday at 3 p.m. and 10 p.m.