When ruling-party militants chased Batty’s owners from their farm in Zimbabwe, they gouged out the puppy’s eyes.
Bloodied and wounded, he wandered the bush for days before he was rescued by animal rights activists and airlifted to safety in neighbouring South Africa.
Animal rights groups have evacuated about 3 000 brutalised and abandoned animals since the start three years ago of Zimbabwe’s often-violent seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks.
More than half have been reunited with their owners, according to their rescuers. Most of the others have found new homes in South Africa.
Batty, a golden Labrador cross, was named by the vet who cleaned and stitched his wounds in Zimbabwe before he was transferred to the Wetnose Animal Rescue shelter in the South African capital, Pretoria.
”Blind as a bat,” the vet had said.
”Some say it’s cruel to keep a blind dog, but we don’t put down blind people, do we?” said Pippa Nairn, who took him home with her to Cape Town.
Nine months later, he is still wary of strangers and easily becomes agitated by sudden noises, or the shouts of children at play.
But he has found a companion and guide in Fudge, Nairn’s fully sighted two-year-old Alsatian cross.
”It has worked extremely well. They are inseparable, they are ideal companions,” she said.
Batty becomes disoriented if taken out for walks, but loves riding in a car, head thrust out of the window, Nairn said.
The dog has now started retrieving balls, even without a bell inside them, and catching mice.
”Being blind, he is super sensitive in other ways, and he has an enchanting and playful personality,” she said.
At least 5 000 white-owned farms have been seized in Zimbabwe since the redistribution programme started. Dogs, cats, hamsters, rabbits, geese, swans, horses and cattle have been slaughtered in the ensuing chaos.
A rescued Labrador named London had acid poured over her coat, said Fiona Manuel, a volunteer at Wetnose.
”Animals are a natural part of any farm life. I don’t understand how there can be this cruelty,” she said. ”Perhaps it is to spite the owners, knowing how much they love their animals.”
Animal activists work discreetly in Zimbabwe for fear of retribution by ruling-party militants.
British Airways flies the rescued pets to South Africa free of charge. They are then dewormed, inoculated and sterilised at the non-profit Wetnose centre.
Beit, a sought-after Rhodesian ridgeback, is one of a handful still waiting for a new home after his Zimbabwean owners moved abroad.
The numbers arriving in Pretoria have started tailing off now that most white farmers have fled their properties, Manuel said.
Many have been reunited with their families who moved to South Africa.
”Many of the farmers and their families have lost everything, so it means a lot to be reunited with their pets,” Manuel said.
When a shipment of 90 crated animals was trucked from Zimbabwe last year, 22 of their owners were there to welcome them in Pretoria.
”The owners waiting here were in tears when we drove in,” Manuel said.
Others, who couldn’t afford to keep their evacuated pets, have stayed in touch with their new owners through Wetnose — even from Europe and Australia, she said.
Nairn, who runs a taxi business in Cape Town, rejects criticism that the time and money spent rescuing pets in Zimbabwe could be better spent alleviating human suffering in the deeply impoverished country.
”Cruelty to animals shows a person has no heart, no soul,” she said. – Sapa-AP