Zambezi Animal Welfare Services - ZAWS

Zambezi Animal Welfare Services - ZAWS Based in Livingstone, Zambia, ZAWS is a non-profit NGO that provides rescue, rehabilitation and rehoming for dogs and cats, as well as education and advice.

We organise community events such as mass vaccinations and spay & neuter campaigns. ZAWS was set up in 2015 with the aim of improving the welfare of domestic animals in and around Livingstone. Our work involves (1) rescue, rehabilitation and rehoming; (2) community education and sensitisation regarding animal care and animal rights; (3) mass vaccination programmes; and (4) population control via spaying and neutering. Please get contact us if you wish to be involved or can make a donation.

Another call yesterday afternoon. Another dog left by her owner with a relative who doesn't care. Another mama who gav...
08/08/2026

Another call yesterday afternoon. Another dog left by her owner with a relative who doesn't care. Another mama who gave birth in a wrong place. Another dog who was going to be shot for just taking care of her babies.

I was told she was vicious. She came immediately when I called her, and it took only 2 pieces of chicken to get the slip lead on. Another example of where people don't understand what's going on and react with fear and violence.

At least now she's safe and warm and her and her babies are protected. At least someone knew someone who knew our number. At least we could show people that she was actually a lovely dog that didn't need to be feared.

This brings us up to 101 dogs at the shelter and 12 hand-reared pups at home. There are 3 nursing mamas, and 36 pups in total. We really need some puppy biscuits. Can you help us with a bag? The brand we use is K657 (£26 or US$ 35) for 20kg.

We're not going to say no when people call and ask for help but the pressure is immense right now. We're feeding the animals but in order to manage we've cut back the staff food budget, we have a big unpaid bill at the vet and - shock horror - there's not even coffee at the shelter!

Please help if you can - Airtel Money 0977 681741 (Lynne Mendelsohn). Stanbic Bank A/c No 9130002075060 A/c Name Zambezi Animal Welfare Services or PayPal - [email protected]

🐾 *HAPPY FARMERS DAY!* 🐾All these pups have been hand-reared from just days old, and soon we'll be looking for loving, f...
03/08/2026

🐾 *HAPPY FARMERS DAY!* 🐾

All these pups have been hand-reared from just days old, and soon we'll be looking for loving, forever homes for them. Altogether we currently have 24 pups, 2 months and under — so finding homes for all of them is going to be a huge challenge!

*Do we give puppies away for free?*
No — our adoption fee is *K400*. This covers the 5-in-1 vaccination, rabies vaccination, spay/neuter surgery, deworming, and tick/flea control. That's nowhere near the actual cost, so why charge at all? Because it's a little income that helps rather than none, and because we believe adopters should go in understanding that keeping a puppy is a real budget commitment.

*Why do we do home checks?* 🏡
After caring for these animals, we need peace of mind about where they're going. We check the fencing, the sleeping area, shelter from sun/wind/rain/cold, and food supply. We ask who will care for them, play with them, love them — and whether anyone needs guidance on caring for a new pup.

*Can you help?*
🐶 Could you adopt one of our little floofs?
📣 If not, please share this post — talk to your family, friends, and colleagues.
🆕 First-time puppy owner? We're happy to guide you and can send an info sheet covering everything involved. Our website also has plenty of useful resources.

Let's find these babies their loving homes — so we can make space for the next animals who need our help! ❤️

Wow! What an amazing event the cake sale was! We raised K12,355 which waaaayyyyy exceeded our expectations. Thanks so...
02/08/2026

Wow! What an amazing event the cake sale was! We raised K12,355 which waaaayyyyy exceeded our expectations. Thanks so much to everyone who turned out to support us and buy the fantastic cakes and desserts! I can't tell you how much we needed these extra funds.

Massive thanks to Zest Bar and Restaurant for hosting and taking care of us so well. We couldn't have done it without our cake bakers and donors - Jollyboys Backpackers Lodge, Mukwa River Lodge, Livingstone, Zambia, junior baker Teagan whose cup cakes sold out very fast Leandre Wilde-Shaw, and the incredible Cecilia Bridget Connick whose idea it was in the first place and who made a truly phenomenal effort.

Watch out for our next one in a few months time!

Fabulous cakes for sale at this morning. We're here til 14 hrs. Enjoy delicious sweet treats, grab a coffee or lunch an...
01/08/2026

Fabulous cakes for sale at this morning. We're here til 14 hrs. Enjoy delicious sweet treats, grab a coffee or lunch and support a great cause!

Update on our rabies campaign.You may remember a few weeks ago we told you about a lot of soon-to-expire rabies vaccines...
28/07/2026

Update on our rabies campaign.

You may remember a few weeks ago we told you about a lot of soon-to-expire rabies vaccines. With only 2 weeks remaining until expiry, Livestock Services decided to donate them. Using Showgrounds Vet Clinic and The AARC as a distribution route - 24,000 doses of rabies vaccines were sent around the country.

I said that we would take 3,000 doses in Livingstone, hoping that we could gather the veterinary resources required to vaccinate dogs in town and surrounding villages. Thanks to amazing donations we raised K34,000 to pay for needles, syringes, fuel and supplies for the vaccination teams. By the time the vaccines arrived, we had a week remaining to use them.

Unfortunately we could not get enough veterinary resource in Livingstone to assist us and our shelter vet had not yet arrived. Mr Likando Songisoput in a huge effort all week, along with Warren Liyungu from Dr Soko's clinic for our day in Simoonga and a final year vet student Muchala who also helped a lot. With more people we could have done a lot more, but we can't force people to help. Despite the challenges we vaccinated 635 animals (604 dogs and 31 cats) in Livingstone and surrounding villages.

When I saw that we were not going to be able to use the vaccines in time in Livingstone, Jessie (The AARC) and I contacted DVOs and veterinary staff in different locations - Mukuni Village, Kazangula, Zimba, Sesheke and Kalomo. The DVOs in Zimba, Kalomo and Sesheke jumped at the chance to help their communities. Zimba did 918 vaccinations, Sesheke 963 and while I'm waiting for final figures, Kalomo should be around the 3,000 mark.

The donated funds were used to buy needles, syringes, fuel, cool bags and courier costs.

In total we have managed to achieve the vaccination of around 5,500 animals, which is amazing. I had hoped we would have been able to do more in Livingstone, but it is what it is for now. The vast majority of the village dogs had never been vaccinated before, and this is in areas where the risk of rabies is serious. We are committed to returning to these locations in January when boosters are due and working towards a rabies free Livingstone.

Another good result is the number of dogs and cats signed up for spaying and neutering.

We are also continuing our work with Livingstone City Council in their vaccination and registration outreach work within the town area, and we are also adding more animals to our spay/neuter wait list.

Thanks to everyone who was out on cold mornings every day to get these vaccines used, especially to Likando Songiso, and to those who fundraised and supported this recent initiative, particularly to Catherine Hoy.

Recently we had a situation where we were asked for help. I’m not going to tell you anything about it, not the situatio...
25/07/2026

Recently we had a situation where we were asked for help. I’m not going to tell you anything about it, not the situation, not the people, not the animal. Let’s just say that this situation 1,000,000% confirms the statement in the poster.
Animal abusers are not nice people and they hurt people too.
The person reporting the situation reached out just in time and we were able to respond immediately. The future will be much, much better for all concerned.
It takes money to be able to do this. To be able to care for all the shelter animals and still have the resources to drop everything and respond immediately. In this case the margin between safety and tragedy was less than 2 hours.
ZAWS needs your support to be able to be this responsive. To also care for the more than 20 new dogs we’ve taken in recently. To still carry on vaccination outreaches, spaying/neutering surgeries for owned dogs and cats, to assist local vets with in-patient care for injured animals, because there is no other option.
Please donate if you can, any amount will help us. We are living on fresh air and prayers most of the time and we need your support.
You can donate as follows - : Stanbic Bank Livingstone Branch A/c Name Zambezi Animal Welfare Services, A/c No. 9130002075060, SWIFT CODE SBICZMLX; Airtel Money – 0977 681741; PayPal – [email protected] You don’t need a PayPal account to donate by PayPal.

I’m not even sure where this week went. We’ve been so busy I hardly even know where to start. I’ll do an update on som...
23/07/2026

I’m not even sure where this week went. We’ve been so busy I hardly even know where to start. I’ll do an update on some of our new patients tomorrow, but in the meantime let’s take a breath and enjoy the fact that we can now say that ZAWS has our very own vet. Ta-da!! Let me introduce Dr Alison, who’s joined the team to care of the shelter animals.

Today Dr Alison worked with Dr Soko on wound care for an owned dog that was surrendered after she was very badly injured. She’s doing well and is expected to make a full recovery.

Just to be clear – we are not operating a vet clinic so please continue to take your pets to your usual vet.

17/07/2026

Episode #562 of a ZAWS team in a drainage ditch. This dog was reported to us on Wednesday 8th late afternoon. Even though we were all tired after a day vaccinating in a village, we went out to look for him until it got dark, but didn’t find him. We continued to look for him in the evenings after we got back from vaccinating for the next few days but no luck. Thankfully on Tuesday 14th someone spotted him and kept watching him until we got there and even made friends.
We could see he’s got a terrible spinal injury; he was just dragging himself around and hanging out in wet, cold drainage ditches. We took him to the shelter, gave him a warm soft bed, vaccinated and dewormed him and told him he’s a good, good boy. He’s super friendly.
He is very, very broken, and has terrible drag wounds on his back legs, but the spinal injury means he is not in pain from those wounds. The question is not whether he will recover from his injury – he won’t. The question is can we give him a good quality of life. We are treating the open wounds as we would with any dog, and he is getting tons of love and great food. We’ve called him Boyd. We’re taking advice from veterinary specialists and will do our best for him, but as for now, he’s really happy and safe. He’s in a similar condition as Sniper was when he came in and he is doing really well, so fingers and toes crossed!
We need to get some vinyl or cheap carpet for the floor of his enclosure so that he has a smooth surface to move on for now. If you could possibly help with a small donation for this we would be every grateful. Thank you.
You can donate via Airtel Money – 0977681741 (Lynne Mendelsohn), PayPal – [email protected] or into our bank account – Stanbic Bank, A/c Name Zambezi Animal Welfare Services, A/c No. 9130002075060, Branch Code 04 10 17, SWIFT SBICZMLX.

Puppies and kittens. Kittens and puppies. We are sometimes overwhelmed with the numbers and no matter how cute and gor...
15/07/2026

Puppies and kittens. Kittens and puppies. We are sometimes overwhelmed with the numbers and no matter how cute and gorgeous they all are (VERY CUTE!) we wish there were less.

Today we can announce the amazing news that we have been awarded a grant by Animal-Kind International to carry out 100 spays and neuters of dogs and cats to reduce the numbers of unwanted and stray animals in the Livingstone area. Every surgery helps control animal populations, prevents the suffering of unwanted animals and improves public health and safety. It is such important work and we can't wait to get started.

How are we going to make this work? We have employed our very own vet who has spent the last month training in Lusaka. She's heading down to Livingstone very soon. This grant enables us to provide training opportunities with experienced vets from Lusaka so that we will be able to carry on our spay neuter programme on an ongoing basis. The impact of this is going to be HUGE! Not just the 100 animals but many many more as our vet becomes more experienced.

We already have a waiting list of over 200 dogs and cats whose owners have signed up for the operation so watch this space to check up on progress.

Thank you Animal-Kind International for giving us this opportunity. Together we are going to make a huge difference to animal welfare in Livingstone.

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Livingstone

Opening Hours

Monday 10:00 - 15:00
Tuesday 10:00 - 15:00
Wednesday 10:00 - 15:00
Thursday 10:00 - 15:00
Friday 10:00 - 15:00
Saturday 10:00 - 16:00

Telephone

+260962865115

Website

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