Pooches save man from street
A TALL man lies “like a greyhound dog”, stretched out asleep in his bed.
A cellphone beeps, it’s a wake-up call. It’s early but a welcome call. For Glenwood resident Wesley Tinashe Chingwe it means employment.
Chingwe came to this country with nothing, but has found an unusual form of employment that pays the bills, and it shows what a bit of brains and hard work can achieve against the odds.
In 2010, Chingwe, 27, packed his belongings and left his country, Zimbabwe, and family in tears. Chased away by the growling stomachs of the young ones, and the elders who grumble constantly about aching backs and feet, hustling to try to keep the lights on and put bread on the table.
The 27-year-old came to Durban from Harare to seek a better life.
“Coming to such a big city and not knowing what you are going to do when you get there, was a very scary thing,” he said as Grace (a pitbull) and Stanley (a greyhound) ran next to him joyfully, at Bulwer Park.
He spent two years homeless and on the streets before finding a job as a domestic worker in 2012.
“An old lady who lived alone took me in as a stay-in employee. I was doing house chores, but mostly I was taking care of her 10 dogs.”
He walked, fed and bathed these dogs. He would take them to the veterinary clinic every now and then and his love for dogs grew every day.
“I started watching television programmes about dogs, such as Dog Whisperer by Cesar Millan. My curiosity at the vet’s got me to know more about the dogs’ health and their behaviour,” he said.
In 2016 he lost his job and was back on the streets, begging for coins from strangers.
“The cold nights and the worry of where or what to eat the next day was the motivation to think of something. I had no education and I had no skills like other men,” he said.
“I remembered that there were people who used to beg me to walk their dogs when they saw me walking my bunch of 10.”
That is when Chingwe started walking dogs at R40 per dog, per hour. Chingwe is proud to say he now earns more than R10 000 a month as a dog walker for his company, Wesley’s Walking Wanders.
Chingwe says it is not always a fun business and there are challenges.
“A client’s dog got killed on my watch. A pitbull that was being walked by its owner somehow ripped the leash and escaped and attacked the little sausage dog I was walking.”
He emphasises the importance of intensive training. Dogs’ lives depend on it.
Thanks to the growth of his company and the workload, he has employed three dog walkers.
“Everything I know about dogs, I learned during my training. All I knew was being a car guard,” said Emmanuel Niyunkuru, one of the employees at Wesley’s Walking Wanders.
Wesley’s Walking Wanders have added more services such as bathing the dogs and taking them to the vet when necessary.
“We spend more time with these dogs than their owners, we know when they are sick,” said Chingwe.
He also uses his Facebook account to reach out to people who have seen a lost dog on the side of the road to call him or text him to pick it up.
“During festive seasons I pick up a lot of lost dogs, because they run away from their homes due to fireworks.” said Chingwe.
Paramedics treat wounded poodle: Page 3
DOG-LOVING paramedic Ceron Meadows and colleague Rowan Scandroglio adapted their medical skills to help a little dog this week when they treated the Maltese poodle Lambo, that had been attacked by pit bull.
They also treated a 20-year-old man, a friend of Lambo’s owner, who had been taking the dog for a walk on the Bluff when the pit bull escaped from a yard in Marine Drive on the Bluff.
“Shame, Lambo was very nervous at first,” said Meadows, adding that it was first time in her 11 years as a paramedic that she had treated a dog.
“I put him on my lap and treated him for a bite underneath his little leg. A bit of the pad of his paw was also ripped open.”
Meadows said Lambo was also covered in the blood of his owner’s friend who also suffered the pit bull’s wrath.
“I cleaned Lambo’s wounds and bandaged him up. When I was finished, he was quite calm,” he said.
The paramedics, from Rescue Care, also attended to the human victim, who had dog bites to his upper body. He was taken to hospital.
Meanwhile, hours later elsewhere in Durban, a pit bull was rescued in Pinetown after it had been spotted wandering around the parking lot of a filling station.
The person who found the dog flagged down a Blue Security armed response officer in Underwood Road just before midnight on Thursday. Pet Rescue Pinetown also responded.
Blue Security community and media liaison officer Andreas Mathios said: “We sent out notifications on our social media groups that the dog had been found, but did not receive any response.”
They handed it over to the Kloof and Highway SPCA which confirmed yesterday that the owners had been traced and the dog had gone home.