Non
Profit
Organization
Mascots
Although the Association has treated and helped bring to health a number of pet species, including; monkeys, parrots, parakeets, other birds, pigs, sheep, goats, rabbits and even pet iguanas, most of our time, energy and funds, dedicated to mascots is focused on dogs and cats.
We believe that every family should have the joy of having a pet. We understand that many of the families we work with do not have the economic means to cover all the costs of maintaining a pet or the welfare that they require, especially veterinary care. Yet, if we were to choose between the life of an abandoned or stray dog or cat or one who, is given at least the minimum required for his wellbeing, the decision is not hard to make and filling the rest of their needs is our job. Love, care and the human passion for having an animal friend or member of the family, is a right that all of us should have.
We don’t want animals in shelters, we don’t want animals waiting on death row for their turn to be euthanized, and if we can provide, the essential element to have dogs and cats live where they belong, in loving caring homes, then that is an easy decision. For us and the persons we work with, we believe that having been born into poverty should not be an obstacle, for having a caring and loving relationship with a pet.
We at the Association for Animal Welfare in Nicaragua are willing with the help of our donors to provide the health care and other assistance to keep pets where they belong, at home. Our mobile veterinary team works with owners to keep their pets healthy, provide short term and long term care and the correct equipment to handle and manage their pets. While our community Trainers provide owners with basic hands on knowledge on good management practices.
We operate a rehabilitation shelter and we provide love, housing, care, to abandoned special animals, because not all the animals we work with are fortunate enough to have a home.
We request that owners, who work with the program, spay or neuter their pets, thus reversing or slowing the continuous stream of abandoned dogs and cats suffering in the streets. We provide neutering and spaying services for free to anyone that walks into our center, during our monthly campaigns.
Fighting Cocks
During their brief lifespan, fighting cocks spend most of their life in cages and are only brought out to train, for what may be their only taste of freedom, the minutes they spend in the fighting ring. If they win, they will repeat this over and over till they are either dead or so injured, that they can´t fight anymore. Cock fighting is not a sport it’s a cruel activity used to for one sole purpose, financial gratification for those betting on the winner.
Every Sunday in many towns throughout Nicaragua, cock fights are the nightly entertainment, for thousands of people from all levels of society. Bets may equal 1,5, 10 or more monthly salaries, for poor families, who bring their roosters to the ring, borrowing or using their own income to bet on a chance to win.
Cock fighting, legal in Nicaragua is a blood sport in which all facets, from housing, training and the ultimate fight are cruel and not justifiable in anyway and for any reason. De-legalizing cock fighting is one of the Associations goals.
Working Horses
Over 15,000 horses work within the capital city of Nicaragua, Managua and the surrounding semi urban areas, with another 5,000 working in the Department of Managua and the neighboring Department of Masaya.
Thousands of families depend on working cart horses for the very livelihood of their families. With very low income levels, low educational levels and living almost as outcasts of society, persons and horses, survive day to day on what their daily effort will bring them. Many living in crowded “barrios”, with barely the space to stand and lay, no access to pasture, to contact with others of their species, nor the liberty and expanses for which they were born for.
10 hour working days, six or seven days a week, with endless miles walked, under sweltering heat, the working cart horse are used to carry heavy materials, pull farm equipment, transport persons in 10 seater carts, walk along the sides of countless road and streets while picking up garbage, plastic bottles, metal, to be sold to the recycling industry for less than U$ 0.10 cents a pound.
The Nicaraguan cart horse, on average starts working at 2 years of age, weighs around 660 pound and is 13.1 hands tall as an adult, with 89% never reaching 10 years of age. Due to a combination of, extremely poor management practices, negligible health care and a view of the horse as a disposable tool, thrown away when broken.
Poverty levels in the communities were horses live have driven horse rustling to be a veritable epidemic, with many horses slaughtered illegally and their meat sold to open air market food stands, where it’s mixed with pork or beef and sold to an unknowing public.
It’s in this environment that the Association for Animal Welfare in Nicaragua, works, bringing health to the working horses, thru our mobile veterinary team and education to their owners on all aspects of animal welfare, so that horses and humans can live and work together as a team, mutually benefitting from each other as equal partners.
Welfare Resources
Over 66% of the horses that the association works with have lesions and injuries or have the scars of these injuries of which most are produced by; ill made, badly fitting, improper harness equipment or tack. The cost to buy a proper set of harness is equivalent to a months´ wages in Nicaragua.
The great majority of the dogs as well as horses, in the communities are tied or tethered with ropes made from nylon or other synthetic material, which is cheap, long lasting and available in-country, cuts, burns, strangulation of limbs and even death are a common occurrence for animals that have been improperly tied, over long periods of time, using these ropes.
The Association for Animal Welfare in Nicaragua helps pet and working horse owners, by producing harness parts for horses and, collars and leashes for dogs and cats, at our center. These are made by saddle/leather makers and were trained by UK based World Horse Welfare (WHW), taking members of the communities to provide them with training in a welfare related, income producing activity.
We provide these artisans, with the materials to make, the pieces of equipment; horse collars, saddle trees, breeching, bridles, leashes and dog collars among others, that can be accessed at the association by pet and horse owners. With hundreds of pets and horses affected by injuries and lesions and an increasing demand for equipment, we can only play catch up. Working with you, we can reduce the space between our capacity to produce the needed equipment and the demand, all for the benefit of the pets and horses that will receive them.
Working for hours on hard pavement or rocky dirt roads, with many horses not being shod, we provide farrier services to clean, conform, and shoe, working horses. Basic activities such as the need for daily hoof cleaning were unknown to most of the horse owners, who in many cases lack an understanding of the basic management techniques to keep their horses, healthy. Part of the daily activity of the farrier is to provide community hoof health clinics to horse owners, thus reducing and preventing mayor problems caused by lack of proper management knowledge.