A little love goes a long way.

Day 3: CLAW and 'Soul City'

Like yesterday, we started off at the CLAW veterinary clinic where we spent some time with the dogs who are there until they find their forever home. I fell in love with one of the dogs, she had no front paw and bite and wire marks on her muzzle. Luckily (for Neal) she is adopted because I was plotting with Alysha on how we would bring her home to Canada. We also saw our biliary dog from yesterday. She was brought to us looking very lethargic, foaming at the mouth, febrile and jaundice. Alysha and I administered steroids, Vitamin B for the liver, and Berenil to kill the protozoan. She was brought to the CLAW clinic for IV fluids. Today she looked much brighter! There was also a puppy from yesterday who was about 4 weeks old who was lethargic, had pale gums and was not eating. We took him to the clinic as well and found out today that he had biliary disease. This is extremely rare in puppies and was fourtunately diagnosed early by an awesome vet.

After the clinic we headed to another township, this one called 'soul city'. It was more poor than the one we were at yesterday. A few of the CLAW men drove around the streets letting everyone know we had arrived. People started to carry in their dogs to us. They let their dogs roam around or keep them tied up with chains or electrical wire. Sometimes a dog has never had a collar (called a belt here) on and get restless when you put one on them. We administered rabies vaccines and other treatments if they promised to sterilize their dog. We treated only one cat today. We saw a dog with distemper- foaming at the mouth and neurologic. It was interesting to see as we don't come across that in Canada much. There was a dog that had been in a dog fight, and we cleaned up his wounds. We found that the township dogs are very well behaved and socialized, we think from being able to roam and interact with each other so much. There are also some funny looking breed mixes, for instance 'Shorty' from the clinic, is a Pittpull Bassett hound cross.

We learned that to rent a shack in the township costs R800 ($115) per month, while their salary is R2000 ($285). We had an amazing experience the last 2 days and will miss the work that we did with CLAW.

Our title was chosen to really drive the point home that both the clinic and the people have so little and yet do so much for their animals. We saw how one little thing like a rabies vaccine did so much and this gave us a whole new respect for CLAW and what they do.