At least eight of the 15 dogs that the @Frits Pet Hotel and Daycare Centre in Bree Street offered to foster have been adopted since the beginning of the month.
The adoptions were to the delight of the owner of the pet hotel, Yanic Klue.
However, she said she was concerned that people were seemingly not interested in adopting three stray cats which were received from Mdzananda Animal Clinic in Khayelitsha.
Ms Klue said the hotel can cater for 276 animals and has made the commitment to offer 10% of their capacity to homeless dogs in need of foster care.
The hotel works with a number of animal clinics and organisations to offer support.
Two weeks ago, the hotel took in six stray dogs from the Mdzananda Animal Clinic which would have been euthanised due to over-capacity.
“This was an extreme case because the dogs were on their way to heaven, and we had to help them,” said Ms Klue.
Mdzananda Animal Clinic had had an enormous influx of abandoned dogs at the end of May.
Having only a small shelter unit catering for a maximum of 15 dogs, the clinic was at a 247% capacity with 37 homeless dogs.
An appeal was made to the public, urgently asking people to adopt or foster. If the clinic was not able to reduce their numbers they would have needed to consider euthanasia as they were not able to cater for the influx.
The @Frits Pet Hotel in Bree Street offered six of these dogs a lifeline.
“We have never had to put an animal to sleep due to over-capacity,” said 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 Pet Hotel and four are still at Mdzananda.”
Randal Cato, the hotel manager at @Fritz, said the staff at the hotel were excited to have the six dogs arrive at the facility. “We’ve been planning for around two weeks and when they arrived, 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,” says Mr Cato.
Ms Klue said in order for the hotel to provide foster care for animals, they had to be dewormed and vaccinated, and cleared by the vet, as they could not endanger the animals already at the hotel. She said dogs that are fostered by the hotel also have to be social.
The six dogs, Tandjies, Twinky, Prisky, Lucky, Lucy and Thiza, as well as the cats and other foster dogs at the hotel are available for adoption. Visiting hours are from noon to 6.30pm Mondays to Saturdays. Animals are viewed at the hotel, however, the adoption process is managed by Mdzananda Animal Clinic. The adoption fee is R600 which includes their sterilisation and vaccinations and dewormers to date of adoption.
The Mdzananda Animal Clinic has lost their largest funder which was covering around 65% of their monthly expenses. In this financial year, the funding was reduced by 64%. This will be reduced further until full extraction in 2019, taking with them a donation of R2.2 million a year.
The clinic will be hosting its annual Mandela Day kennel building events on Thursday July 18 and Saturday July 20. They are in need of wooden pallets or any wood which can be used to build dog kennels. Kennels will go to pets in the community without shelter.
The clinic also raises funds through their Paw Member campaign and will also be having book sales in Somerset Mall in July and Cavendish Square in August. Contact marcelle@mdzananda.co.za or visit www.mdzananda.co.za if you can help by donating books for the sale, building material for the kennels or funds to keep the clinic in operation.
