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