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Starting our New Dog Buddy Lesson!

We created a lesson to teach the kids how to provide the basics to their dogs.

At DAKTARI Bush School & Wildlife Orphanage we welcome 8 students every week to learn about the environment and to develop an interest in taking care of it. We do this through our wildlife orphanage. We have more than 30 animals that need to be taken care of. Among all these, we have six dogs, each of them have quite a different personality. In the villages where these children come from dogs are seen more as house guardians than pets. The families often don't feed them regularly, don´t provide shelter, and don't take them to the vet. In this context, dogs need to have a specific working function, they are not a member of the family. For this reason, at DAKTARI we created the “Dog Buddy Lesson”. Together with Christine Otto, the founder of ALECS Education for Community, she taught our staff very important lessons to pass on to the students, and provided crucial information on how to take care of the dogs, given how these are treated in the village. During this lesson, our volunteers will teach the kids about the importance of providing a shelter and of giving food and water everyday, the 5 animal freedoms, and on how to identify common diseases. Our approach to this problem goes beyond the lesson, we serve as role models in our daily interactions with the dogs. Everyone at DAKTARI, volunteers and staff, makes sure they are taken care of and always take pleasure in giving them attention. In DAKTARI Bush School & Wildlife Orphanage we work towards creating environmental awareness and to teach the students the importance of caring about their animals and nature. We strive to motivate and inspire the students to become a part of the change they want to see, as well as to make South Africa a better place.

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