Rural Animal Care

23/06/2025

A few more photos of Smoky and Booster..

22/06/2025

Smoky and Booster’s Story.

Having briefly mentioned Booster and Smoky in our last post, I’m just praying we’ll find this very special pair of dogs the perfect owner in this one!! A pretty Pit X Canis Africanus, we couldn’t understand why Smoky was surrendered to us, only realizing why when she was returned by the kindly family who’d adopted her, having annihilated all their chickens and started on their neighbours turkeys!! The poor girl had obviously been from pillar to post, which is probably why she was so jittery when she first came to us, and it took a little while before she settled down, only to transform completely when Booster arrived with us a few months later. Unbeknown to us, this beautiful boy had shared a home with her at some stage and she was absolutely overjoyed to see him, leaping around like a mad thing - playing, pronking and as happy as any dog I’ve ever seen – which is why we’re determined not to separate them again.
Booster, a beautiful tan Pitbull, ended up with us by default. Someone phoned to say he’d been dumped on her, she couldn’t afford to feed him and her own dogs and she wanted $20 for him, if we were interested. Of course, we were the last people she could have asked because we don’t believe in buying or selling dogs (putting it in much the same category as the slave trade) but when I said we’d give her $20 worth of dog food and find him a good home, she refused, at which we fetched him immediately, giving her the dog food and $20 (guilessly saying it was a gift to thank her for looking after him) because we didn’t want him to end up with someone who might want him for breeding or fighting – something that might well have been his original owner’s intentions, given that not only had his tail been docked, but his ears had also been cut off, which isn’t unusual in that world.
A gentle, affectionate boy, now sterilized and fully vaccinated, he’s put on so much weight that he looks a bit like a sausage that’s about to burst, but he’s happy and healthy, as is Smoky, his bestie, and they’d make wonderful companions and guard dogs for someone – preferably without free-range chickens because we haven’t completely overcome Smoky’s chicken chasing yet!! Having said that, she now stops in her tracks if she’s yelled at for looking at Tawanda’s guinea fowl, which is a start, and I’m hoping she’ll stop altogether when she realizes she no longer has to fend for herself, which is what happened with a brindle boy we took on years ago. Strong, energetic dogs, both of them are desperate for attention and will need lots of space and someone young enough to cope with them but, if you fit that bill, or know someone who does, PLEASE would you contact us on 0712 448 766 or 0773 100 599 – you won’t regret it.

16/06/2025

Our First VAWZ Spayday of the Year!!

On Tuesday the 3rd June, we were lucky enough to have VAWZ come out with 3 vets to sterilize and vaccinate some of the dogs in Caledonia, which is our area. Despite sterilizing the dogs we treat, we always have long waiting lists and in an attempt to pre-empt the inevitable no-shows, I booked in 80 dogs, which was just as well, as we actually ended up with 53 – 33 spays and 20 neuters, all of which we delivered home afterwards with a blanket, lead, packet of dry food and sheaf of RAC leaflets. While we took care of the rabies certificates and records, the VAWZ inspectors vaccinated 416 dogs and we’re very grateful to Mel, because we simply can’t afford to do them all without help. Thank you also to the vets - Caro, Frances, Moses and Sue Elliot – not forgetting our trusty little band of volunteers who worked like Trojans.
Although most of the dogs were in reasonably good condition, there were quite a lot of bleeding, flybitten ears and, even more disturbing, 3 dogs without any ears at all. Not cropped or pricked - both of which are outlawed now, thank God - but cut right off. We’ve been trying to find the perpetrator but there’s a code of silence as strong as the Mafia’s ‘Omerta’ out there and as long as there’s a market for ferocious looking dogs, I’m afraid we’re fighting a losing battle. Speaking of which, we’re desperately looking for a good home for Booster (a ridiculously affectionate earless pit) and his bonded partner, Smoky (a pit canis cross) but we’ll keep their story for another post because we’ve got quite a lot of photos for this one, which is great, cos a picture really does paint a thousand words.
But before I bring this to an end, there’s one aspect of Spaydays I often forget to mention, and that’s the fact that we’ve never yet had a spayday without at least a handful of seriously sick and injured dogs in need of hospitalization, all of which are taken into Kam Vet as RAC patients. This one was no exception and, while a couple of biliary cases were treated by the VAWZ vets as outpatients, we took in two parvo cases, a pretty little grey and white girl with ascites (a fluid filled abdomen from protein deficiency) and a dear little white distemper pup. There was also an adult GSD with a swollen head that had been bleeding from his nose and mouth for 3 days, something we hadn’t seen before - the result of an abscess on his head that had spread into the sinuses, and after several days at the vet, he came back to us for rehab, which is where he is now, only going home when he’s well enough to do so.

14/05/2025

15/04/2025

Rural Animal Care has launched our GoFundme campaign with a target of $150 000 AUD. All donations help us to continue our work in the rural areas of Zimbabwe, bringing veterinary care to these poor animals.

Visit our refurbished website to learn more about our story and goals:

Website - https://ruralanimalcare.com/

GoFundme - https://gofund.me/8e5d10e0

If you can't donate PLEASE SHARE! Thank you from all of us at RAC!

Rural Animal Care provide essential veterinary care to rural animals through vaccinations, spaying, ambulance services, rehabilitation, and education.

30/03/2025

Kruger M
FA Brown
Chasing a Foreign Body

After a lengthy stay with us many years ago (recovering from a necrotic bont tick bite) Kruger M’s very dear to us and we were really distressed to hear that, once again, she was in pain, this time with a hole in her side. No-one knows how she got it, but when Tawanda took her to the vet, they realised that it was very deep, put her on a drip and admitted her for treatment and further investigation - only to discover that she had a foreign body migrating under her skin, in much the same way that bits of shrapnel often migrate in the limbs of wounded soldiers, sometimes many years after the original injury.
Poor Krugie needed surgery to remove it before she could come back to us for rehab, which broke my heart because I absolutely adore her and couldn’t bear the thought of having to let her go again. Having said that, we know she loves her owner - thank God, because when the very old Gogo she’d lived with, died, she voted with her feet, trailing behind the kindly young woman who’d befriended her - and the photo of her gazing adoringly up at Mrs M when T takes her home says it all - after which she happily curled up in her kennel, which we’d delivered to her new home when we discovered she’d moved house!! Every one of the hundreds of animals we take in every year has its own story, but this one was particularly hard for me. This job isn’t something we crazy animal people choose – it finds us, and even though it hurts like hell, we can’t refuse it because it’s more important than we are, and every night of agonizing is worth it when we can help ease the pain of a suffering dog or make things a little easier for some of the other vulnerable little critters around us.

09/03/2025

Rings C
FA Bl/T
Whelping Complications & Singleton Puppy Syndrome

We seldom post distressing cases because fortunately, they’re fewer and further apart than our happy endings but, given that the tragic outcome of this story was almost inevitable and the info behind it is both interesting and helpful, I decided to include this one. Fielding a call from an anxious owner whose pregnant bitch, Rings, looked as if she’d been on the verge of giving birth for over 24 hours, we wasted no time in getting there, after which Tawanda headed straight for the vet with her, arriving just as dusk was falling. The vets were busy, but when they saw her discharge and raging temperature, the urgency of the situation was obvious and she was immediately prepped for an emergency C Section. Poor girlie. Anaesthetized and finally out of pain, all the vet could do was remove the putrid body of a large single pup (which would have been a breach birth) clean her up and complete her hysterectomy, after which she remained in high care - only to succumb, a few days later, to the septicaemia they’d been trying so hard to get her through.
When Tawanda said the vet had told him it was a classic case of Singleton Puppy Syndrome, I did the usual and looked it up to try and make sense of it. As we all know, dogs usually give birth to multiple pups but occasionally, when only one develops, it’s called a Singleton, and the condition (referred to as Singleton Puppy Syndrome) not only presents extra challenges for the mother and pup, but can often be fatal to both. Altho more likely to be seen in toy breeds like Chihuahuas, it’s uncommon, has no single cause and can be the result of genes, hormones, age (very young or old mothers) infections or poor health and nutrition and, to make matters worse, it’s hardly surprising that it’s very often missed altogether.
Apparently, labour is initiated by the pups, only starting when they produce enough stress hormone to kick it into gear, but when there’s only one pup, with ample space and food, it doesn’t produce enough of this hormone to trigger it, which is a real problem because
the placenta's only viable for a certain amount of time, after which it will fail and if the pup isn't born, it will die in utero. When this happens, if the mother dog doesn’t deliver the dead pup, she’s in danger of becoming seriously ill and ending up with a ruptured uterus and, without an emergency caesarian to remove it, she will inevitably die too, which is what happened to Rings, despite all our best efforts.
Having said that, there’s a bizarre twist to this story because very occasionally, when a singleton pup dies, the mother’s immune system sees it as a foreign body and, in an attempt to shield the mother from infection, encases it in a calciferous substance that mummifies it – creating something called a lithopedion, or ‘stone baby’ – a name that comes from the Ancient Greek for ‘litho’, meaning stone, and ‘pedion’, baby. What’s more, apparently this rare phenomenon is not unique to dogs but can also occur in humans, with 300 known cases of lithopedion fetuses recorded in the history of medical literature, most of which went undetected for decades, only to be found when the women carrying them happened to be X-rayed for other conditions.
Poor Rings, I wish we’d been able to save her, but hopefully her story will make it easier for the rest of us to prevent this happening again on our watch.

RIP Rings ❤

04/03/2025

Cookie C
FA (Tan Pitbull)
Prolapse (Vaginal Hyperplasia) & Spay

Cookie had only been with her new owner for a week and a half when Kelvin called us for help, and when Tawanda heard that she’d been given to him after she’d had a vaginal prolapse, he guessed that her previous owner either couldn’t afford to take her to a vet, or wasn’t prepared to do so. Having said that, she’s a lucky girl because Kelvin clearly cares about her and when he realized that sterilization was the only way to ensure that she wouldn’t have another prolapse, he was more than happy to have Cookie spayed while she was undergoing treatment for it at the vet. Although it should have been seen to earlier, no infection or necrosis had set in and it was interesting to learn that the larger breeds are more prone to prolapse than most and as it can be passed onto offspring, it’s not advisable to breed a dog that’s had one - altho that’s purely academic because we don’t believe in breeding at the best of times!! Anyway, back to Cookie - all went well, and before long she was back with us for rehab, wearing an oversized buster collar to make sure her stitches remained intact. Although she wasn’t aggressive, we had some difficult dogs in the kennels and having had a recent incident with a beautiful pit who didn’t appreciate being hassled by a couple of rambunctious youngsters, we decided to err on the side of caution and put her in an adjoining kennel on her own - something she protested vigorously – as we well know, given that the kennels are at the bottom of the garden and sound travels, and I have to say that we were probably as relieved as she was when she was finally able to go back to her new life with Kelvin!!

03/03/2025

Please keep sharing our gofundme link or dm us for local donation details...
the work RAC is doing is SO necessary, these poor people and their animals, have nowhere else to turn 😥