Even though we are an Animal Hospital, many homeless pets need us

Anyone who follows our social media would have seen that we regularly post images of pets up for adoption. Mdzananda is set up as an animal hospital treating sick patients - we've never really been set up to take in stray or abandoned pets . This doesn't mean, however, that we would turn a homeless pet away. Over the years the number of pets handed over to us has grown in leaps and bounds. Our patient runs, which used to be used as hospital patients exercise areas, had to be "handed over" to the strays. And so our little stray unit started. This unit has sufficient space for 12 dogs. Very often we go over this limit as more and more pets are surrendered making it hard to effectively feed, clean up after and look after strays, but we do it because they need us. Today we would like to introduce Chloe. Her owner brought her to Mdzananda as she was a "bad guard dog". We took poor Chloe in - she was terrified to say the least. Chloe spent the first two weeks simply hiding in or behind her kennel. She was scared to be touched and flinched at any movement or sound. This dog very likely never had human contact or love. Today she is still very scared but coming out of her shell bit-by-bit. A volunteer behaviourist visited Mdzananda to help Chloe and some other dogs to gain more confidence. She didn't quite know what all the attention was about but clearly enjoyed receiving love. Often pets like Chloe get overlooked - the typical medium, beige Africanis. They look like all the other dogs. Mostly the small fluffy ones get adopted while pets like Chloe wait and wait. Chloe might not be cute and fluffy but she has a heart of gold, even though she's still learning to show it to us. We are very grateful to have a handful of fosters who help to look after pets until they are adopted. We can always do with more fosters so if you are able to foster Chloe or are interested in adopting her, please contact us on admin@mdzananda.co.za