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Friday evening, finally. I have been working solid for two weeks and can’t wait to sleep in tomorrow morning. I have been to Eastern Cape for 8 days joining my colleagues at the “Community Outreach programme”. In short the Outreach is about visiting underprivileged areas around the country to assist the people with their animal care. During the week we set up a temporary veterinarian clinic in a public hall in the little town of Cala. The first day we drove around talking to people and asking them to send their dogs (and a few cats) with us to our clinic for sterilisation and vaccination. It took a day for them to start trusting us I think but when more and more people witnessed that we actually brought their dogs back in the afternoon they started to approach us instead. Some dogs were also ill and most of the time the owners asked us to put them down or they might not have understood it was ill at first but then agreed to put them to sleep. We did it all for free of course and the demand was overwhelming. We could have stayed for weeks. We worked 12 hours per day and still the dogs kept on coming in. I was really amazed by the positive response and by my more experienced colleagues who handled aggressive 50 kilos dog like it was nothing. We are talking about asocial dogs that even wanted to bite their owners! I also learnt how to vaccinate dogs and, sadly, how to put down dogs as well. A sad reality, but rather that than leaving them to suffer. The main problem in the area was a dog decease called TVT, which is like a contagious tumor decease and spreads via dogs mating. It attacks the sexual organs and I saw one poor male where the most of the penis was rotten. You can imagine the pain when trying to wee, poor dogs. Every evening I came home to our Bed & breakfast feeling like I was full of dirt, flees, doggy hair, blood (from operation) and wee.. It was hard work, stressing around fetching dogs, carrying and handling aggressive ones but it felt rewarding at the same.
So I have now been working for about a month and I am still learning a lot every day. I will be a trainee for another two months until I write my entrance exams. It is different from the animal welfare work I did in Sweden on a local authority. This is a non governmental organisation but still we have more powers to act instantly and we also work more with animals “hands on”. In Sweden you demand the owner/farmer to call in a veterinarian. Here their might not be any around or people might not be able to afford one. We got the powers to take an animal away if it is urgent or we can put them down. Yes, that is the negative about this job. We have to learn how to put animals to sleep ourselves. During catastrophes or decease outbreaks for an example, SPCA is even called out to cull (put down large amounts of animals). At the moment there are a lot of fires happening around the country and some colleagues are out there ready to assist any animals caught in the fire. Putting down cats and dogs are with injections which I find a bit easier to do although it always sad. Now since I will be working with farm animals we do not use needles but instead we put them down by slaughtering them in a humane way. That means we first stun them (to make them unconscious) and then we must bleed them out. I have not yet done it myself and I am worried about doing it myself, of not doing it correctly etc. Luckily we do not have to do it on a daily basis. Most of the work is about inspecting farms and abattoirs (slaughter houses) to make sure the animals are treated in a humane way. SPCA is about animal welfare, we are not activists in anyway. We do not mind the slaughter of animals for an example as long as it is done in a humane way and the animals are cared for. A lot of people think we are against meat eaters etc but after talking with them for a while they usually understand what we are doing and why. Having an inspector background will certainly make the job a little bit easier although this is a different culture and I think the language might be a challenge sometimes. A lot of farmers are still white Afrikaners speaking and they might sometimes be stubborn and refuse to speak English although they know it. This could also be a good opportunity to learn a little bit of Zulu. I gave up on Nbebele in Zimbabwe but Ndebele being related to Zulu hopefully I could pick up something easier 
Otherwise the guest bedroom is almost done now, only a few minor things to finish off. At least it is not pink anymore and Philip got somewhere to sleep. Troye found a way out from the property the other day so at the moment we got builders here putting up a small wall and a gate towards the ridge so we can close the dogs inside the garden should they find another whole to escape through. Troye did come back home again but I am always worried since we got a busy road below us. While the builders are here we decided to also build a Braai stand and Neuren is very excited by the idea of having a Braai in time for the National Braai day on 24th September haha.
Ok now it is time for my favorite show “Friends” so by for now!
I finished my two weeks inspector course on Friday with an exam which I passed! I am now a step closer to becoming a qualified animal welfare inspector. Only one assignment to go which I will probably start with after new years. I have not been given my subject yet but hopefully it will be something regarding farm animals.
