Reducing the Problem of Street Dogs by Volunteering at an Animal Shelter in Northern Peru

It was 10pm and pitch black when I arrived in the tiny deserted town of Colan, and with 30kg on my back and no idea where on earth I was going, I was starting to get a bit apprehensive. One of the locals picked up on my need for help, and subsequently asked around the few people out in the streets where the ‘lady with the dogs’ lived. He took me down a wide but poorly lit dirt road, my heart pumped a little faster, and I tried to figure out what my best method of defence would be in the event of attack (swing my backpack at them?!)

We knocked on a door and out popped Rosemary – a half-Peruvian, half-South African woman who greeted me with smiles and soup. I was safe, and turned to thank my guide profusely, feeling slightly guilty that the thought of him mugging me even crossed my mind. It was an interesting start to my time at the animal shelter, and an experience of Peruvian rural life that I won’t be forgetting any time soon.

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The garden as AHSFA – greener than any other part of Colan

Rosemary’s story

Rosemary runs Asociacion Humanitaria San Francisco De Asis (AHSFA), an animal rescue centre in a beach town in Peru called Colan, right up near the Ecuadorian border. She houses over 40 cats and 10 dogs in the shelter, and runs a vet clinic which operates a couple of days a week to spay and neuter dogs and cats that live on the streets in the area.

The main bulk of the work that the shelter does is try and minimise the problem of street dogs and cats in Peru which, as anyone who has been to the country will know, is spiralling. Funding for Rosemary’s project comes from a few outside sources, such as the Bridget Bardot Foundation, but she strives towards self-sufficiency.

Rosemary set up this project equipped only with her own two hands and pure passion for animals. She has lived in a few places all over the world during her 70 years on this planet, but each time she visited Peru her heart ached when she witnessed the treatment of the animals on the streets, and it was this empathy that made her decide to make Colan her permanent home.

Rosemary adopted cats and dogs one by one as they were bought to her doorstep after serious mistreatment or a lack of care from owners. She took each of them in to do everything she could to improve their quality of life, losing some within a few days or creating success stories out of others that still live at the shelter today. Meeting someone who has a simple but immensely strong love of animals is inspiring to witness when you have even the smallest amount of the same characteristic in you.

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Chulipa, the smallest dog at the shelter

Volunteer work

Rosemary started taking volunteers on from early 2012, and they have helped to revolutionise the way the shelter works. It’s an exceptionally small project, so if you’re looking for somewhere you can see huge effects on a large scale then Colan might not be the volunteer placement for you. If you’re happy in the knowledge that you’ve helped a few animals to continue to live without fear of malnutrition or poor treatment, then AHSFA might be the right fit.

Volunteer duties range from walking dogs, administering medication, looking after Rosemary’s lush and green gardens, helping to improve the shelter by building glass-bottled walls or odd-job repairs around the place. While sometimes you may not get to directly help the animals, especially if there are a number of volunteers working, you get to be around them all the time, which was personally enough for me. Dogs would lollop up to me whilst I was at work, or a cat would come and brush itself against my legs.

My sunset mosaic at the animal shelter – two weeks of work but I will forever be proud!

I adopted the role of arts volunteer, and spent my days creating mosaics on walls to beautify Rosemary’s garden. It wasn’t necessarily what I signed up for, but it was a project that Rosemary wanted to complete for a long time but never found someone to do it so I willingly took it on when I realised how happy it made her to see it completed.

Two very special dogs – Laika and Rosie

I’m much more of a dog person than a cat person, and ended up having a pretty special relationship with two dogs in particular. The first dog that came to greet me when I entered the shelter on that dark night was Laika. The first thing you notice about Laika is that she has three legs, and her front left leg is now just a tiny little stump tucked up into her body, which sparked off my nickname for her – ‘Lord Nelson’.

Laika was hit but a car when she was young, and when found she was taken to a clinic and kept there for a year. Vets attached a metal pin to her leg to try to stabilise it, but it proved so uncomfortable for her that she eventually ripped it out with her teeth.

Laika’s lack of a fourth leg is made up for in the use of her tail, which she will whip around frantically if anyone goes anywhere near her. As quite possibly the most flirty dog I have ever met, Laika knows how to make herself look completely irresistible which resulted in me spending many an hour rubbing that belly of hers.

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My favourite picture of Laika – makes me melt!

Rosie is also a long-standing resident of AHSFA, and her beautiful golden hair and loving nature makes her another star of the show on a daily basis. Rosie’s story is probably the most harrowing of them all – she came to Rosemary absolutely terrified of men, especially men in groups, and this stems from the belief that she was raped by gangs of teenage boys when she was younger. As a dog lover this was incredibly hard to hear and probably the most abhorrent story I’ve ever heard about animal cruelty.

Today, you wouldn’t have any idea that this happened to Rosie as she greets both men and women with affection. Rosie and Laika often fight for attention from the volunteers, and if you go and pet Laika, expect to have Rosie bounding at you within seconds for a good ear-scratch too.

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Rose peeking at me – she didn’t like having her photo taken much

Placement details

I enjoyed my time as AHSFA, and ended up extending my stay at the shelter by a further 2 weeks than originally planned. I would definitely suggest trying to go when there are less volunteers, as you will get more out of the experience and have direct contact with the animals that way.

This position requires a donation to participate, which is around $100 for your first week but the prices go down the longer you stay. With that you get your accommodation and three meals a day from Monday to Friday, breakfast on Saturday and Sunday. You work around 25 hours per week and the shifts are split up nicely throughout the day. It was actually much cheaper when I stayed there in Jan/Feb 2013, but I think Rosemary is changed the pricing to encourage longer stays as it takes a while to train people up with the animals and for the dogs to be comfortable with volunteers. You would definitely benefit more in the long run if you stayed with AHSFA for an extended period of time.

AHSFA is a place for animal lovers who want to help with small-scale projects and change the lives of just a few cats and dogs on a daily basis. It might not seem like you’re doing much in changing the world, but the community of Colan is slowly learning how to look after their animals through the work that Rosemary does. We all know that creating global change never happens overnight, and it takes small steps like working in communities such as Colan to help them care for animals, but it’s these small steps that will benefit so many in the long run.