Making Happy Tails for Street Dogs in Rwanda

Dear friends and supporters of WAG, 

We hope you are all doing well - the dogs all send their greetings to wherever this report finds you in the world! 

Thanks to your ongoing support, we are continuing to run our little shelter in this peaceful corner of Kigali - rescuing dogs, providing them with love and care, and finding them permanent homes. Since our last report in mid-March, we have rescued 22 dogs, including 4 orphan puppies who needed bottle feeding, mama dog Viola and her 5 newborn babies, lots of single orphan puppies, and several adult dogs including one with a TVT tumour on her face. But we’ve only rehomed 5 dogs in this time – adoptions have been really slow the last few months: few adoption applications, and even fewer who end up actually adopting. So, our shelter has been much busier than usual, with more mouths to feed and paws to walk! But all of our shelter residents are happy and safe. 

We’d like to share a few stories of the dogs we’ve rescued recently whose care has been made possible thanks to you: 

Shoebill 

Shoebill was found during our Kigali mass vaccination campaign in March, terrified and in distress. Once our team managed to catch him (using our new catch nets!), they found that he had a chain deeply embedded into his neck. 

We quickly got him to the shelter, sedated him and worked to remove the chain. It left a gaping wound around his neck; he would have certainly died had we not rescued him. 

The community where we found Shoebill told us that he did once have an owner but he was abandoned. Yet another dog, left on the street to fend for himself - the problem of abandonment keeps getting worse in Kigali and we are finding dogs like Shoebill who have suffered terrible neglect and abuse. 

Luckily for Shoebill, he is now healed and ready for adoption. He’s a quiet boy and prefers to spend time alone away from the other dogs. He would thrive in a calm home by himself, with a lot of love so he can learn to trust humans again. We’re really hoping we find him a home soon, but until then, he is loved and cared for at the shelter. 

Wissa 

Wissa is one of our most recent rescues, a sweet and friendly girl who was abandoned with her legs tied together, the rope causing deep wounds. Someone had heartbreakingly abandoned her to die. When we first met Wissa, we originally thought that she had a jaw injury, but it is in fact a birth defect or very old injury; she has a misaligned jaw and her nose points to one side. Despite her tough circumstances, Wissa is a lovely dog who just wants to be with people. She’s sociable, playful and adventurous - and we think her distinctive facial features make her all the more loveable! 

Bruno

Another victim of abandonment, Bruno was found lying in the road, extremely malnourished and with a skin infection. We were shocked at his condition when we found him, and at first he didn’t trust humans at all - it took Paci (our certified dog whisperer!) a couple of hours to gain his trust enough to catch him. 

But now Bruno has made an incredible recovery and he’s friendly and active, and a favourite amongst our shelter team. He has forgotten his past and is now looking forward to a happy future! 

Mass Vaccination Campaign Project

In our last report, we were about to start our Kigali mass vaccination campaign in partnership with Mission Rabies. This was the first ever systematic, door-to-door vaccination campaign in Rwanda, and we had teams of vaccinators and data collectors going to every corner of Kanombe and Masaka sectors to vaccinate dogs to reach a 70% rabies vaccination coverage. Post-campaign surveys showed we did, which was a huge achievement - and as well as vaccinating almost 2000 dogs in a little under 10 days, we also discovered a lot more about the dog population that helps our work. We found that the majority of dogs are kept in extreme confinement during the day, almost half are let out to roam unaccompanied at various times, and the majority of dogs are not sterilised. So this campaign not only helped protect our dogs and communities against rabies, but it told us more about dogs are kept and how we can advocate, educate, and run programs to change things to improve the welfare of dogs. We are working on education and veterinary outreach projects, amongst many others, as well as a continuation of our commitment to support the Government of Rwanda achieve a rabies-free Rwanda by 2030!

We hope that you continue to be inspired by our work - we really do so much with so little and we are most definitely changing lives and making a positive impact. Over the coming months we hope to share more with you about our plans to construct our own shelter - another project we are working on in the background! - as well as updates on the new and ongoing projects we have running. Without you, none of this is possible, so thank you. 

With love from the humans and dogs of WAG Rwanda x