The Uganda SPCA has opened an animal shelter. This is the first and only animal shelter in Uganda. "The Haven," located in a shanty section of Mbuya (Kampala), consists of nine dog kennels, one puppy holding kennel for newcomers, and a double cattery. USPCA has the use of the garden and kitchen of the facility and Vet Berna has created a state of the art veterinary clinic. (UPDATE: Now Vet Alex, as of August, 2009, Berna has moved on.)

There is a disgruntled mascot dog called Kenny-the first "client" the USPCA accepted. He is Lord of the Manor and struts around while the other dogs look at him with envy. Paulo serves as caretaker, looking after the animals and the compound. Remmy, who was trained by the previous field officer Ibra, spends much of his time responding to calls and collecting injured or stray dogs and cats in Kampala; and while doing this, he tries to encourage people to provide better care for their dogs and cats and teaches people to be kind to animals.

As you can imagine, the USPCA needs to raise funds for the significant expenses of running the kennels. There's rent and salaries to pay, veterinary care and medicines, and dog food to buy.   

Some of the People Who Make the USPCA Work
Katia Ruiz Allard is a Peruvian biologist who grew up in Africa, and has lived in Uganda for over ten years. Soon after she moved to Kampala, she found that there were a lot of dogs and cats living in pretty miserable conditions, yet there was no organization working to improve the situation. She approached Dr. Johnson Acon, professor of veterinary medicine and head of the Veterinary Department at Makerere University in Kampala, who agreed that there was a need for such an organization. Together they formed the USPCA-the Uganda Society for the Protection and Care of Animals. Katia is currently Executive Director of USPCA.

• Chiara Francescon has for a long time worked to improve the conditions for animals in Uganda. She is a business person in Kampala and is Treasurer of USPCA.
• Ibra Nsereko was employed as a gardener, but had an obvious love for and way with dogs and cats. He became the first USPCA Community Animal Welfare Officer, a role that has now been taken up by Remmy.
• Berna Nakanwagi was the USPCA Vet for nine years. She is now in private practice, and Alex Mugisa has taken over her position as of August 2009.
• The Executive Committee oversees the work of the USPCA and is responsible for fundraising.

Ugandans mainly keep dogs for guarding, and guard dogs are expendable. All a guard dog has to do is bark to wake the human guard (who may have fallen asleep during the night) or to alert the family or neighbors that a thief is around. If, in the process, the thief poisons the guard dog, the guard dog has already done its service by providing the bark that alerted the family to beware. The thief throws poison meat, the dog gobbles it up, the dog barks, the lights go on (or the guard wakes up and chases the thief), the thief runs off, the dog dies.

If the owners of the home are away, they will leave the dog behind to guard. But thieves are often watching and know when the owner is gone, and they poison the dog, and break in the house.

Acquiring a dog in Uganda is not costly, and training a guard dog is easy. Dogs are "trained" to guard by keeping them in a small wooden box, often not big enough to stand up in or turn around, for about 18 hours a day. Usually the box has iron sheets for a roof, and under the African sun, it gets very hot in that small space. Sometimes a few dogs share one box. The dogs can see nothing outside the box-their world is the lifeless space of those few square feet.

Only one person is allowed to feed the dog. Everyone else is the enemy. Tough behavior is encouraged by feeding the dog hot chillies, beating on its box, prodding him with sticks to make him angry, perhaps even starving him to make him alert, always on the prowl for food, mean and angry. Usually it's the gardener or guard or a child in the family who is the primary dog handler. The training technique works, these dogs can become really vicious. There have been reports of gardeners failing to lock up the guard dog in the morning, and a child in the family goes outside, and is attacked and killed by the family dog.

Also, many of these guard dogs bark at any noise or movement, and they keep the neighborhood awake all night. The USPCA gets many complaints about dogs barking through the night.

During the day, there aren’t many stray dogs on Kampala’s streets. But at night, when they are released from their wooden crates, they may escape their compounds and meet at the rubbish heap to find some food. Rabies is a concern there, and loose dogs on the street may be stoned to death or poisoned—by an individual or sometimes by the City Council. Strychnine is the poison of choice, it is certainly not species specific, and children and other animals have been poisoned with baits set for dogs. It is a slow, painful death.

Cats are mainly kept to keep mice, rats, and snakes away. They are usually not fed, and are expected to provide for themselves.

While this may sound dismal, some Ugandans are starting to take interest the concept of having a pet, in part to provide guarding services, but also to just enjoy the company of another species.

The animal center had a room for surgeries and other vet care, an office, and a humane education room with a library, geared to educating children about animals. Within a couple of years, the USPCA had sterilized about 200 animals just in the Kamwokya area, and more in other parts of Kampala, as well as Entebbe.

During this time, WSPA was supporting Uganda’s Animal Kindness Clubs, providing humane education to schools throughout Uganda. USPCA closely linked their education efforts to WSPA’s. WSPA also supported rural animal clinics, where hundreds of animals (dogs, cats, cattle, chickens, goats, sheep, rabbits) received free veterinary treatment, and WSPA also provided training to USPCA vets and humane education officers. WSPA no longer supports rural animal clinics or Kindness Clubs. WSPA now helps the USPCA by providing USPCA members with training in fundraising.

Around 2000-2001, Humane Society International (an arm of Humane Society of the U.S.) visited Uganda to see the USPCA in action, and decided to provide an Emergency Care Fund for the USPCA to use in emergency cases; the fund has been replenished, but on an ad hoc basis. The USPCA continues to be very active in Kampala and sometimes beyond.

Livestock
As a Ugandan born and bred organization, the USPCA sees itself as a proponent not only for animals, but also for Ugandan animal welfarists. So the USPCA asked Ugandans what they think the USPCA should do about animal welfare in Uganda. The overwhelming majority of Ugandans mentioned the horrendous livestock transport conditions. Ugandans wanted cattle traveling from west and north into Kampala to be transported in a more humane manner. read more..

Seeing a livestock truck travel from the west upon its entry into Kampala is never a pleasant sight. The large horned cattle, Ankoles, are tied to the trucks’ overhead bars by the horns and sometimes by their tails. But during the trip over rough roads, and also because of bad driving (and no concern for their cargo), the ropes slip down around the necks, and cattle are usually hanging in the back of the truck, gasping for breath. Sometimes they die along the route. The trucks have slatted sides, and with all the knocking around, their legs end up sticking out of the slats at odd angles, often breaking along the way. Then, when they arrive at the slaughterhouse, they are roughly offloaded, often dumped from the trucks because no ramp is available, and beaten as they move into the holding pen.

The actual slaughtering is just as inhumane, and whereas slaughter could and should be a quick death, at Kampala’s slaughterhouses, it will often take five or more men to wrestle a cow to the floor to slit its throat, a process that can take 15 minutes for each animal.

The USPCA’s Current Programs
The USPCA now has an animal shelter, The Haven, where they can keep approximately 50 dogs, several puppies, and 20 cats. They can also spay and neuter and provide other veterinary care on the premises. The Kamwokya Animal Center is currently not being used, but the USPCA would like to hold free spay and rabies clinics, depending on the availability of funds.

• continues to educate people about more humane methods of keeping and training dogs.
• provides free spay-neuter and other veterinary care for poor families and animals in need.
• provides foster homes and has kennels set up to hold stray dogs and cats that are brought from the street and to hold cruelty cases.
• holds fundraising campaigns to raise money, but with so many competing causes and charities in Uganda, fundraising within the country is extremely difficult.

See "USPCA 's Requests" for information on how you can help animals in Uganda.

USPCA's Requests

Dogs/Cats
The USPCA pays $33 to spay a dog or cat, and give a rabies vaccination. Your donation of $33 will spay one dog or cat and provide one rabies vaccination; your donation of $330 will spay ten dogs or cats and provide ten rabies vaccinations. We are targeting females since our funds are low and with one vet whose services are already spread thinly, we have to maximize our investment.

You can also donate funds for general veterinary care. For example, the USPCA would like to organize regular clinics in slum areas where any animal can get treated for diseases or injuries, and can be de-wormed and get a rabies vaccination. The cost of this general veterinary care would be about US$8 for each animal treated.

The USPCA is trying to convince people not to keep their dogs in small boxes, and for willing owners, is providing an alternative—a running line. For US $7 the USPCA can buy the material for and install a running line.

You can sponsor a USPCA kennel and provide support to feed the dogs at The Haven. Usually, a kennel holds about six dogs. Supporting one kennel for two months costs about $200. At your request, the USPCA will send pictures of the dogs that occupy your sponsored kennel space.

You can support the USPCA by donating rent for one month. The USPCA has to pay US $400 for rent of The Haven premises. Any donations are greatly appreciated, especially given the high cost of rent and the salaries the USPCA now has to pay to keep The Haven operating.

Livestock
For each Animal Check Point, the USPCA has to cover retainer costs and transport costs for at least two policemen, one Kampala City Council Veterinary Officer, and one Senior Officer from the Veterinary Department. In addition, we cover transport (and salary) for the USPCA Officer. It is important to have all these staff at each checkpoint to minimize the opportunity for corruption.

One Animal Check Point costs the USPCA, in Uganda shillings, as follows:

15,000 Ug sh/policeman x 2 = 30,000
15,000 Ug sh/City Council Officer
20,000 Ug sh/Senior staff
10,000 Ug sh/USPCA officer
Total=75,000 Ug shillings, approximately

It costs the USPCA US $50 for every Animal Check Point. We try to have at least two Animal Check Points in place each week—the Animal Check Points have been a proven method; the fines and threat of imprisonment have made a real impact on the way cattle are loaded, but we have a long way to go and must be able to keep these checkpoints in place.

UPDATE: AS OF AUGUST 2009, ANIMAL CHECK POINTS HAVE NOT BEEN IN PLACE FOR SEVERAL MONTHS DUE TO LACK OF FUNDS. THIS IS AN IMPORTANT PROGRAM, AND ONE THAT THE USPCA HOPE TO REINSTATE IF FUNDS BECOME AVAILABLE.