Angie Comnell

After a meeting with the council, word got around that we were in town, and people had a clear idea of the benefits of the services we were offering. Rex and Sharon Gibson were our two translators, and with the assistance of their beautiful son Lawrence we canvassed the community performing a head count of male and female dogs and any litters of pups, worming them with ivermectin and fish paste sandwiches. 

On our second day we had an excellent response. Visiting houses to round up potential surgical candidates we found that people were happy for us to operate on not only their female dogs but also the males. We strongly encouraged castration discussing the benefits with the owners in terms of aggression and fighting. I was surprised that it was accepted so readily; people could see from our first visit that desexed animals made better companions. Of course as in any cross section of society, there were those that preferred to keep their dogs entire. The dogs are valued for security, hunting and companionship, however they are not trained or disciplined as “pets” they are their own entities, free to wander off or hang around. They were not used to being restrained, even by their owners, let alone white people and the owners were equally wary about restraining them for sedation. Once sedated, heavily, using a dose of acepromazine, butorphanol, atropine and if necessary a hint of metedominine, they were driven to our “surgery”. We worked outdoors in an undercover area behind the health centre. This was a central area and we were very visible to the community in this location. Children and adults were encouraged to watch, ask questions or help restrain animals. The temperature was over 40 degrees every day and twice it was over 45, which was less than ideal for the anaesthetised patient and surgeon. Over the 5 days we desexed 38 dogs, 18 male dogs and 20 females. This was an excellent achievement although we felt we could have done more had we been able to catch them. The impact our program has had on the community can be seen simply in the ten litters of unweaned pups were seen at the first visit, compared to one litter this time.

I would like to thank AMRRIC for allowing me to volunteer on this program. As I had never done any community work before I found the idea quite daunting at times, but the team members were very experienced and supportive. I will certainly be involved in similar programs in the future! Angie Connell.