Four Podengo cross puppies found abandoned in Cape Verde

From left Tango,Oscar,Brava and Zulu

Four Podengo type puppies were left in the road outside a holiday complex in Sal island, Cape Verde. They come from the same litter. although colours vary from chocolate through black and white to pure black. They look to be about three months old. One must presume that someone who did not have his bitch neutered was embarrassed when she became pregnant. The habit here is to permit pets to roam the streets. They mate with alacrity and startling vigour.

The puppies found a gap in the perimeter wall and squeezed through. There they were confronted by a German with a kitchen knife.  Evidently in the Fatherland puppies are not permitted to invade his living space as they tend to drop pooh. However these dogs were starving so their drops were the size of acorns. He tried to prevent anyone giving them water or food.

Two of the puppies - the largest and bravest - were discovered by Jenny an English woman who walks the complex. When we took food we found a third. So we were planning to call them Yankee Doodle and Dandy from the old American Revolutionary War song ( War of Independence in the US).  Tony from New Bedford Mass  who is the Sal dog catcher collected them . By then there were four. They were totally terrified. One bit him and the others defecated or urinated from terror on being picked up.

Yankee Doodle Dandy goes on about a feather in his cap, which he called macaroni. But this did not seem a good name in an island full of Italians who have been in Sal since Mussolini built the airport.

So the brown boy is Oscar and the girls are Brava - after the Cape Verde island where Tony has his ancestral home - Zulu and Tango.

We are looking for kind homes anywhere in the world. And trying slowly to persuade them that not all humans are Nazis.

All four puppies have now been rehoused with Cape Verdeans in the port town of Palmeira. All seem to be happy and the tapeworm which Tango had, has been cured.

We later found out after Oscar the brown boy returned to us for a night that he had round worm. That is two different types of worm in a single litter.

It says a lot about the conditions into which podengo puppies are born in the Cape Verdes that the mother was possibly suffering from two different types of worm when she gave birth.

An organisation called SOS Cats and Dogs is doing its best to make life more palatable for podengos in Cape Verde, If anyone should visit the island of Sal - or any other Cape Vrerde island, please bring a gift of dog medecines as these are horrifically expensive and in very short supply.

Since my last report Tango has been run over by a careless driver and killed. Brava cowered under a furniture commode, obviously scared of everyone. when we visited her new home and we had to give up the attempt to greet her. Zulu has been sold on by the owner to whom we gave her for free and we have no idea where she is. And Oscar who has been renamed Happy by his school-teacher owner did not recognise us when we met in the street outside his house. At first he shied away from us in fear. Only when we repeatedly called him Oscar did he remember us and come up to show his affection.

This is the reality of a dog`s life in the tropics. Fortunately six other dogs - two of which can be classed as mostly Podengos - have been safely rehoused with kind people in London, Scotland and Germany.  If we make another rescue we will again embark on the lengthy and costly procedure of importing a dog to Europe.

A German vet called Dagmar is once again in Sal. performing up to 30 operations a day to neuter cats and dogs that mostly live in the open on the island of Sal and frequently become pregnant.

This has been organised by Save Cats and Dogs of Cape Verde, a voluntary organisation of mostly Finns, Americans, English and Italians. It has had to endure deliberate obstruction from the Camara ( City Hall)  which evidetly believes that foreigners resident in these tropical islands have no business interfering with the normally unhappy lives of local dogs. The Camara`s solution - a concentration camp. which currently houses 40 dogs in squalor

During the neutering campaign, the organisers have received 13 puppies, which have been abandoned by their owners.