On Thursday, June 6, six stray dogs from the Mdzananda Animal Clinic were given a second chance at life by the @Frits Dog Hotel in Cape Town City Centre.
Mdzananda, an NPO veterinary clinic in Khayelitsha, had an enormous influx of abandoned dogs at the end of May. Having only a small shelter unit catering to a maximum of 15 dogs, the clinic was at a 247% capacity, with 37 homeless dogs staying there. An urgent appeal was made to the public, asking people to adopt or foster. If they could not reduce their numbers, the clinic would need to consider euthanasia as they were not able to accommodate so many dogs.
Luckily, the @Frits Dog Hotel on Bree Street, Cape Town offered six of these dogs a lifeline. The hotel can cater for up to 276 animals and has made the commitment to offer 10% of its capacity to homeless dogs in need of foster care.
Twenty-five other dogs from the clinic, meanwhile, have either been adopted or taken in by foster parents since Mdzananda made the appeal.
“We have never had to put an animal to sleep due to over-capacity,” says Marcelle du Plessis, Fundraising and Communications Manager of Mdzananda Animal Clinic. “After releasing our public appeal we received an enormous amount of emails, Facebook messages and phone calls to offer support. To date, 15 dogs have been adopted, 10 have gone to foster homes, six have gone to the @Frits Dog Hotel and four are still at Mdzananda.”
Two dogs were very ill when they were abandoned at Mdzananda. “Beauty and Bruno had advanced distemper. This is a contagious virus and both dogs had clearly been suffering from it for a long time. When they arrived at our clinic they were already beyond the point of recovery and in extreme pain and discomfort. The best we could do for them was to put them to sleep,” says du Plessis.
“We were extremely excited to have the six dogs arrive at our facility yesterday,” says Randal Cato, Manager of @Frits Dog Hotel. “We’ve been planning for around two weeks and when they at last arrived yesterday, our entire staff compliment was extremely happy to meet them. Each dog was welcomed into our facility and received a nice bath – a fresh start to their new life.”
The six dogs, Tandjies, Twinky, Prisky, Lucky, Lucy, and Thiza are available for adoption at the @Frits Dog Hotel on Bree Street. Visiting hours are from 12 to 6.30pm Mondays to Saturdays. The adoption fee is R600 – this includes sterilisation, vaccinations and deworming to the date of adoption.
The fee goes to the Mdzananda Animal Clinic, which will manage the adoption procedure.
Picture: Pixabay