Nairobi Dog Names

A stray dog in Nairobi found an abandoned infant in a poor neighborhood near the Ngong forests in Nairobi and saved its life. The pup apparently found the infant in a forest and carried it across a busy street and through barbed wire to her litter of puppies, according to witnesses. It is thought that the dog found the baby in the plastic bag in which it had been left, according to Aggrey Mwalimu, who is the owner of the shed where the dog was keeping watch over her puppies. The infant, who weighed seven pounds and four ounces, was brought to the hospital for treatment. According to Kenyatta National Hospital spokeswoman Hanna Gakuo, “she is doing well, responding to treatment, she is stable”. The media in Kenya frequently report on the abandonment of newborns by mothers; it is believed that poverty and the inability to care for the child are the cause of the abandonment. The majority of those who abandon a baby are never caught.

Sniffer dogs have joined the fight against the $20 billion illegal wildlife trade. Asha, for example, is an English Springer Spaniel who scrambles over suitcases on a conveyer belt full of luggage at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport. While Asha appears playful, she is actually hard at work. She has received special training to sniff out ivory in airports and ports in Kenya and Tanzania. Asha is one of eight sniffer dogs that are focused on combating illegal ivory trafficking. Trained by the African Wildlife Foundation in partnership with the Kenyan Wildlife Service and Tanzania’s wildlife division, Asha and the other dogs sniff baggage for hidden ivory.

According to Mark Kinyua, the head of Kenyan Wildlife Service’s Canine Unit, “if you have four or six busts in one month, that’s really something. It speaks to the international community that this area is well-guarded and we are combating wildlife trafficking. Sniffer dogs were able to confirm a large seizure of ivory (worth more than $60,000) that was in transit through Nairobi on its way to Bangkok. Dog trainer for the African Wildlife Foundation, Michael Ogwora, explained, “we use a small amount of ivory, maybe some grams, and the dog can detect 0.5 grams hidden in a bag or luggage”.  According to Ogwora, “the dog will just go straight there instead of going to each and every bag”.

The dogs are also able to detect other illegal wildlife products, like pangolin scales. The dogs that are based at Nairobi’s international airport have made more finds than any other team of detection dogs in East Africa.