Animal-Kind International
Aug 16, 2016
Along with Namibia rural SPCAs and Have A Heart-Luderitz, Aus, & Bethanie, AKI supports-thanks to our donors-Erika's Katutura Food & Vet Care Project. We last reported on this project in a January 31, 2016 AKI Blog post. Here's an update of what AKI donor funds have been used for.
Erika and her small team visit Katutura, a poor township outside of Windhoek, one to two times a month (depending on availability of $$) to bring dog and cat food, treats for the kids, to dip the dogs and provide flea/tick protection for dogs and cats, to give pet advice, and to just help people care for their pets. When they can, they arrange to have dogs and cats spayed or neutered.
February 2016 visit
Erika: We went feeding and dipping last Saturday again. One of the guys wants to have his dog spayed and Have A Heart is only in March and so I pay for the spay with money from AKI. There is also a sick dog whose costs I will pay with the AKI funding.
As you can see below, the Katutura Team's visits are becoming more popular!
March 2016 visit
Erika: Quite a few people approached us on Saturday asking whether we could help them with spaying their dogs and cats. Now I have 8 dogs & cats that we can spay with the funds from AKI.
A woman phoned me the other day and said that her dog has cancer and the vet said she should feed him mainly mince, chicken, carrots, butternut, beet, peas and carrots and if I could bake cookies for her dog with these ingredients. So I backed one lot of cookies with mince, beet and carrots, the other lot with chicken, carrots and butternut and gave her these cookies. She was very enthusiastic and said her dog loves these cookies and if I could bake 300 cookies for her. So guess what did I do the weekend? Baking these cookies – I haven’t done 300 but will deliver 200 to her tomorrow.
We were also approached by a guy asking us to dip and feed in another area of Katutura which we will do next time. I am considering doing 2 Saturdays of feeding and dipping in Katutura (in different areas) but will see whether I can raise the funds for all the food.
The people know us already and are happy so see us. A lot of kids brought their cats along and the one women brought her cat in a bird cage (as you can see from the one picture). So I powdered the cat through the bird cage!!-see picture below.
April 2016 visit
Erika: On Saturday we again went to Katutura for feeding and dipping and this time I took a few pages of white sheets and crayons along and asked the kids that they should draw their dogs or cats. They were very keen on doing this (photo below of the drawings). It went well on Saturday and I even had some dog food left, but there are so many cats that I did not have enough food for them. We now want to use some money to spay the cats as there seem to be more cats than dogs.
Erika: Now I have been approached by the daughter of one of my colleagues here at work. She has moved with her husband to Aranos (tiny village in the South-East of Namibia) and is teaching there. She said that there are a lot of dogs in the township which need to be spayed and the owners would also willingly do so. She knows a vet in that area and we will negotiate a reasonable price with the vet and I will support her with the next AKI money. The Aranos township is very much smaller than our numerous big townships around Windhoek. (See pictures below of the Aranos farm dogs).
And the good news is that: SO FAR, 4 OF THE ARANOS DOGS HAVE BEEN SPAYED!