Four-legged Companions Pilot Pet Taxi in Cape Town
The taxi is being piloted by AfriPaw and is aimed at providing access to its free monthly animal clinics for pets living in poor communities like Vrygrond
A handful of four-legged companions from Vrygrond in Cape Town got to test out a new bicycle taxi for pets run by the organisation, AfriPaw. The aim of the initiative is to provide access to the animal clinics for pets living in under-resourced communities like Vrygrond.
“We noticed that people were unable to come to the clinic because their pets didn’t want to walk the distance,” says Anél Wesson, Director and Co-Founder of AfriPaw. Once a month, the organisation brings a mobile clinic to the parking lot at Capricorn Primary School, where they offer vaccinations, sterilisations, and a number of other health checks.
They found that some pet owners in the area were too old to walk to the mobile clinic. She says that after they saw a number of people bring their pets to the clinic in trolleys, they began to toy with the idea of starting a pet taxi.
They needed the “taxi” to be simple and cheap so it could easily be operated by people from their community. While this is still the testing phase of the project, she says they are looking into which bicycle works best to pull the weight of the animals. The cart was built and designed by 4Evr Plastic Products pro bono. The setup costs for one unit is R25,000 for the first year, thereafter it would cost about R7,000 a year. This includes the bicycle, cart, cage and the wages of the rider
They say that their ambassadors from the area educate and encourage pet owners to visit their monthly clinics. “It’s very much a community integrated effort.”
In the future she says that they would like to grow and replicate this model into other areas
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