Community dog welfare in northern Tanzania

Every dog we treat gets a name, a notch and a number.

We run mobile clinics for the dogs that live between the houses of Arusha and Manyara — free rabies vaccination, sterilisation and treatment, village by village, recorded dog by dog.

Give to the clinic fund See how a clinic day works

A tan street dog sitting in dry grass, looking directly at the camera — **Kito, record TDR‑3972.** Picked up with a wire snare on his hind leg near Mto wa Mbu. Treated, vaccinated, sterilised, and back on his own street eleven days later.

Rabies is a solved disease that still kills here

Tanzania loses an estimated 1,500 people to rabies every year. Almost every case begins with a bite from a dog nobody had vaccinated.

The dogs are not wild and they are not really strays. They sleep in compounds, follow the herd out in the morning, and eat what a household can spare. Three or four families will feed the same dog and none of them will call it theirs. That is exactly why it has never been vaccinated, never been sterilised, and never been counted.

Culling has been tried across East Africa for fifty years and it does not work: remove dogs from a ward and unvaccinated dogs move in within a season. What does work is unglamorous and well proven. Vaccinate seven in every ten dogs in a place, keep doing it every year, and rabies stops moving between them. Sterilise steadily alongside it and the population stops climbing.

So our job is arithmetic as much as medicine. To know we have reached seven in ten, we have to know how many there are — which means a team on a motorbike, a village register, and a record for every animal we touch.

How the four programmes fit together

Three herders walking across an open plain with a dog beside them and cattle in the distance — Between Engaruka and Selela. A herding dog covers twenty kilometres a day and meets dogs from six other bomas on the way — which is how rabies travels, and why the register is drawn by ward, not by household.

What we do

Four programmes, one team, one vehicle. A clinic day usually runs all four at once under a tree in the village square.

A veterinary team member kneeling on a street beside a dog held in a soft catch net

Vaccination rounds

Free rabies shots at a fixed point in the village, then door to door for the dogs that did not come.

61 villages on the annual round
Certificate given to the household

A thin mother dog standing on a dirt road while four puppies feed

Sterilisation

Surgery in a clean field theatre, same day discharge, and a notch in the left ear so any team can see she is done.

18 to 24 surgeries a clinic day
Owner consent recorded in writing

A young dog resting in the shade of a village compound next to water buckets

Treatment and rescue

Mange, snare wounds, road injuries, distemper. Most dogs are treated where they live rather than taken away.

Call-out line open seven days
26 kennels for cases that need them

Two women standing together outdoors in a Tanzanian village, smiling

Wards and schools

Bite first aid, what to do after a bite, and how to handle a frightened dog — taught in Kiswahili by people from the ward.

34 schools reached last year
22 village dog wardens trained

The last ten dogs through the clinic

Week of 7 September 2026

Record	Dog	Village	Date	What we did
TDR-4512	Kesho	Mto wa Mbu	11 Sep	Sterilised, vaccinated, released
TDR-4511	Unnamed male	Selela	11 Sep	Rabies vaccination, mange treated
TDR-4510	Dafina	Selela	11 Sep	Sterilised, vaccinated, held overnight
TDR-4509	Mosi	Engaruka Juu	10 Sep	Snare wound cleaned, vaccinated
TDR-4508	Pendo	Engaruka Juu	10 Sep	Sterilised, vaccinated, released
TDR-4507	Unnamed female	Losirwa	9 Sep	Vaccinated, booked for surgery 23 Sep
TDR-4506	Bahati	Losirwa	9 Sep	Road injury, splinted, in kennels
TDR-4505	Subira	Ngaramtoni	8 Sep	Sterilised, vaccinated, released
TDR-4504	Zuri	Ngaramtoni	8 Sep	Vaccinated, listed for adoption
TDR-4503	Chui	Kisongo	7 Sep	Distemper care, isolation kennel

A sterilised dog carries a small notch in her left ear. It heals in a week, it can be read from across a road, and it means the next team through the village does not sedate a dog that has already been done. The same notch sits in the pad of our paw mark, because the record is the work. Two of the dogs above — Bahati and Zuri — are waiting for homes.

Since 2016: 38,412 vaccinations, 9,806 sterilisations, 61 villages on the annual round.

Dogs looking for homes

All nine dogs available now

TDR-4402

Amani

Male, about 8 months
Found at Kisongo market

Vaccinated and sterilised

Calm around goats and chickens. Wants one person to follow around all day.

TDR-4351

Neema

Female, about 2 years
Selela, mother of five

Vaccinated and sterilised

Raised a litter under a shop veranda. Gentle, food-focused, house-trained in a fortnight.

TDR-4471

Juma

Male, about 4 months
Mto wa Mbu

Vaccinated, sterilise at 6 months

Confident, noisy, learns fast. Best with a household that already has a dog.

TDR-4188

Rafiki

Male, about 3 years
Arusha town

Vaccinated and sterilised

Lived behind a hotel kitchen for years. Unbothered by traffic, crowds or motorbikes.

The first year we argued with them at the gate. Now the ward pays for the fuel.

Elias Mollel, ward executive officer, Selela
Partner since 2019

A village street in the Tanzanian highlands with people walking between houses and eucalyptus trees — Selela on a clinic morning. The register for this ward lists 412 dogs across 186 households.

Give to the clinic fund

One donation covers everything a dog needs on a clinic day: the drugs, the fuel to reach the village, the surgeon's time, and the record that proves it happened. Nothing here is charged to the family that feeds the dog.

$12

TZS 31,000

One rabies vaccination, the certificate for the household, and the entry in the ward register.

$45

TZS 117,000

One sterilisation: anaesthesia, surgery, pain relief, the ear notch, and the follow-up visit.

$180

TZS 468,000

A whole clinic day in one village — roughly 90 dogs vaccinated and 20 sterilised.

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