BlindLove South Africa, May 2023 Report
Your generous donations have allowed Animal Aid Abroad to support our newest partner group, BlindLove, based in South Africa. The following report is on the working donkeys in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa.
With their working donkey program, BlindLove had initially set out to hold 3 bigger veterinary outreach/donkey days over the period of 12 months. These will be taking place with the date set for the first BIG outreach on the 3rd August!
The vets from the Grahamstown Veterinary Clinic will be there, together with an Equine dentist and farrier, already organised. The vets have asked us to get hold of some handymen to fix carts here and there on the day too.
We will be chatting to owners about welfare issues, and what can be done to improve the lives of their working donkeys. The plan is also to approach local businesses to provide small prizes/incentives to owners that participate on this day.
The date has also been set for the castration of the 10 donkey stallions, 13th July. The Vets wanted to wait until winter to do these and have organised vets from Port Elizabeth to assist on the day as its quite an undertaking!
With Malibongwe (the donkey owner trained by F.A.C.E as a Donkey Champion back in Grahamstown it was decided that our Director Philippa Du Toit meet up with him at least once a month and hold smaller informal outreaches with the donkey owners. We have provided him with a small box of first aid supplies to treat minor injuries and wounds. Philippa met up with him on the 4th May and again on the 30th May.
We are also going to start using Peter Muckles welfare assessment tools, putting all owners and their donkeys onto the list.
On the 16th May we also attended a welfare workshop hosted by Eseltjiesrus Donkey Sanctuary from the Western Cape. The workshop called ‘One Health One Welfare’ focused on Donkey behaviour, Humane education and the ‘Hand Assessment Tool’.
Director Philippa Du Toit attended, Malibongwe and the Blind Love groom Michael Mahlaba. Malibongwe also managed to get a couple of the donkey owners to attend on the day!
After struggling with the cart horse harnesses in Thaba’Nchu it was also decided that while the sewing/machines/needles/tension gets sorted out we would go ahead and start sewing up donkey harnesses by hand as they are a much more simple design. Our groom Michael hand stitched 2 harnesses quickly and neatly. We took these through to Malibongwe and he is now sewing up our first batch of 10 for us!
