Making Happy Tails for Street Dogs in Rwanda

Hello WAG friends,

Since our last report, we’ve been rescuing, rescuing, rescuing! We’ve never seen this many dogs on the streets of Kigali before and we have been at maximum capacity for the past 4 months. Between September and December, we’ve rescued 19 new dogs and puppies, and rehomed 11. A particularly memorable adoption was Lucky moving to Uganda with his new family after they heard about WAG and decided to make the long journey from Kampala to Kigali to adopt from us and support our work. 

Before we tell you about some of our new rescues, some happy news about the dogs we included in our last report: Felix, one of the most malnourished dogs we’d ever rescued, and Mango, left on the street by her former owners, were both adopted! Hope has not yet found her perfect forever home, but she is enjoying being part of the pack at the WAG shelter - and having one less leg than all her friends hasn’t stopped her boundless energy! 

A couple of rescue highlights from the past couple of months: 

Merry and her 5 puppies were rescued on the side of the road in Kimihurura, a busy residential area. Merry had half her tail missing, and her puppies were only a few days old and in a very bad way. Unfortunately, 4 of her puppies passed away from canine distemper. Merry also showed symptoms but thankfully made a full recovery, as did one of her puppies Honey. It was the first time we were dealing with canine distemper at WAG, and we’ve learned a lot about how to care for dogs with this serious virus. Honey has now been adopted and Merry is a well-loved part of our WAG pack now. We’re hoping she can find a forever home in time for the holidays :) 

Jim the German Shepherd was rescued from Masaka in a desperate state. He was so thin we could see every bone in his spine. Jim was found already neutered, and his condition suggests that most likely his family left Rwanda (or no longer wanted him) and he was left on the streets to fend for himself. Despite his enormous size (which he has no awareness of!) he loves nothing more than jumping up for a hug, and he is definitely one of our most goofy shelter residents. 

We’ve also had lots of single puppy rescues - Sophie, Pedro, Sugar, Bruno, Sunny - who were found on the street at different locations, all alone. Sugar and Bruno were both hospitalised with parvovirus, a common but often fatal disease that mostly affects young, unvaccinated puppies. Your donations continue to go directly to ensuring like our puppies and dogs get the medical care they need - routine care such as vaccinations, spaying or neutering, and flea, tick and worm medicine, and emergency vet care such as the hospitalisation and round the clock monitoring Sugar and Bruno needed to beat parvo. 

Some big news that we’ve been working on for the past couple of months is our upcoming move to a new shelter! You may have heard about this through social media and our Giving Tuesday fundraising campaign. Thanks to our supporters we raised an incredible US$6,494 in 24 hours alone — which is a huge amount of money for us. Now we have secured the site, we are working alongside the landlord to do renovations. We’re most excited about having more isolation / quarantine space, meaning we can take more dogs off the street and directly into our care while keeping our longer-term shelter residents safe from diseases and parasites. Overall, we’ll be able to double our intake of dogs and provide a much safer and welfare-focused environment for our dogs, which is crucial as we prepare them for their forever homes. We’ll be working hard over the holidays with the aim to move in January 2024, so stay tuned on our social media for updates! 

Thank you for your continued support and love for WAG, 

The WAG humans and dogs

Hello friends of WAG,

This summer has been a challenging one for our team in Kigali, but the resiliance of the dogs in our care and the on-going support from our community has been a huge source of encouragement.

In June we took on a few dogs with complex medical challenges,  more specifically severe injuries brought on by mistreatment of humans. While the stories below are hard to read, please know these dogs are expected to make full recoveries and we're fully commited to a happy ending! We also want to say a special thanks to those of you who made donations specifically for their care- the vet care needed cleared our reserves entirely and you stepped up in a time of huge financial constraint.  The additional support we have received over the last month has been critical in ensuring we can get them the care they need while still running the day to day operations at our shelter.

Hope  was rescued with a severely injured leg. Community members told us that someone had intentionally thrown stones at her, and this act of cruelty left Hope completely without use of her front leg. We brought Hope into WAG, and x-rays showed that her ankle joint had been completely shattered. Her paw had already started dying and a huge wound had formed where she had been dragging her foot along the ground. Dr. Bosco, a veterinary doctor who specialises in orthopedic cases at New Vision Veterinary Hospital Rwanda recommended that the only course of treatment was to amputate Hope’s leg. 

Despite having a major surgery, Hope was up and about the very next day, and has continued to make incredible progress in her recovery. She is very energetic, bouncy and friendly, and loves nothing more than jumping up and giving everyone a one-legged hug! Hope is now available for adoption and her future looks bright. Had she been left on the street, the infection in her foot would have continued to spread up her leg and she likely would have died in a few weeks. We are so glad to have been able to give Hope a second chance at life.  

Felix was rescued from the street in a dire state: we have never seen a dog as thin as him.His condition is indicative of severe neglect, and we suspect he had been locked in a cage for a very long time before being thrown on the street, almost dead. He has neurological problems due to nutritional deficiencies and starvation and as a result he is unable to walk. His coat is sparse and his skin is dry and flaking. Felix’s extreme neglect almost resulted in his death, but a WAG volunteer found him just in time and he is now receiving care at our shelter, having nutritionally dense food, multivitamins, and joint supplements. He is now able to stand and take small steps, and we hope that he will continue to put on weight so that once he is in a better condition we will be able to better assess the neurological damage.

We also rescued Mango, a young female dog who was put on the street by her owners. They simply no longer wanted her anymore, and so they put her on the street and shut their gate. Mango stayed around in the area, desperate to get back to her family, and she grew thinner and thinner without food. We were contacted about her by a concerned community member, and although we spoke to Mango’s family, they didn’t want to take her back in or learn about how to care for her properly. So we took her into WAG, and she’s now enjoying a second chance with her new WAG family. She is available for adoption now, and will be a fun and lively companion for a family who is willing to open their home to a rescue dog. 

Finding dogs like Hope and Felix, who have been intentionally harmed by humans, and Mango, who has been dumped on the street with nowhere to go, is often very difficult for us at WAG. We are working so hard to improve the lives of dogs, and at the same time humans commit acts of cruelty and abuse that impact far many more dogs than we can help. We are committed to expanding the community work we do, educating dog owners and community members to take care of their dogs and look out for street dogs. 

Over the last couple of months, we have been working on updating a few of our processes/systems to make sure we are running efficiently and providing dogs with the best standards of care. We have developed a foster home contract, to formalise our relationship with our foster homes and to make sure responsibilities of fosters are well understood. We have developed a relinquishment agreement, for rescuers to sign when they hand over their rescued dogs/puppies to WAG, to protect ourselves if in the future those rescuers come back to claim their dog. We are also in the final stages of updating and expanding our adoption contract, which we ask all adopters to sign. This updated contract will more clearly explain specific responsibilites of a responsible dog owner, including best practices for feeding and training, and being responsible for their adopted dog for the entirety of the dog’s lifetime. We hope that this will provide even more support to our adopters as they begin to care for their new family member. 

 In April/ May we have had a few visits to WAG  from different organisations and individuals. One of these visits was from Irinda Irakoze, a student from the Rwandan Institute for Conservation Agriculture (RICA), who, for her capstone project, developed a homemade dog food made from poultry byproducts. She brought a sample of her dog food to our WAG dogs, who very much enjoyed the tasty treat! We encouraged Irinda to continue to work on the project when she graduated, as locally accessible and affordable Rwandan-made dog food would be a huge advantage to dog owners in Rwanda and potentially increase the welfare of many dogs. Look out for future collaborations with Irinda and her team! 

 In terms of partnerships news, we are excited to announce that WAG is currently working on a project proposal for integrated bite case management (IBCM) for Mission Rabies. Mission Rabies is a UK-based non-profit organisation who run rabies elimination projects around the world, but they currently do not work in Rwanda. We are excited to have initiated this partnership with Mission Rabies and we hope it brings more expertise in rabies elimination and humane dog population management to Rwanda! As well as this potential partnership with Mission Rabies, WAG also had a call with Dr. Charles Rupprecht, founder of the Global Alliance for Rabies Control, and we presented the current situation of rabies elimination efforts and humane dog population control in Rwanda. We are looking forward to continuing that partnership with him and hopefully hosting him in Rwanda towards the end of this year!

 This update is a bit longer than most, but we're been busy and wanted to share. We hope you enjoy keeping up with our news.

With love and appreciation,

WAG humans and dogs