Sad final days for Zimbabwe vet as farmers have pets put down
By Peta Thornycroft in Harare

The destruction of the first of 650 former guard dogs will be the last task of veterinary surgeon Robert Gordon in his native Zimbabwe.

Dr Gordon, 42, is leaving for New Zealand on Monday, unable to take the strain of destroying family pets and horses any longer. For the past six months he has done little but put down the pets of fleeing white farmers.

"I worked in Cumbria last year during foot and mouth," he said yesterday. "This is worse. I have put down hundreds of family pets and hundreds of horses recently. Some families want to stay with their pets when I do it. Others can't take it, and leave first.

"I have nowhere to bury the animals as I was chased off my farm. So the farmers have to take the bodies away. Sometimes we put the horses down mine shafts.

"I respect farmers who decide they have a final obligation to their animals, and put them down. A woman asked me to come and shoot seven horses this week. I am glad she changed her mind."

The 650 dogs belonged to a security company in Banket, 50 miles north of Harare, which employed more than 400 farm guards but closed its doors yesterday because of political unrest.

The company, Tredar, had been guarding homes in the once prosperous grain belt around Banket, but since white farmers were evicted or fled in early August, they were protecting homes and agricultural equipment that had been abandoned. The first guard dog to be put down was a labrador, Wimpy, a young bitch, passed on to the company after her owners, also farmers, fled.

But Dr Gordon will only destroy the first 20 dogs. "We have been shooting the horses according to Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons' guidelines. I would rather use chemicals, but we haven't enough. We can't shoot dogs and cats and the few vets left in Zimbabwe are putting down pets at such a rate, we have run out of the chemicals."

The remaining dogs will be put down in batches when the chemicals arrive from South Africa, said Diana Hopcraft, who with her husband Paul owned the security company.

Dr Gordon wants no more to do with it. "I can't ask them to pay, it feels like blood money, paying the hangman. I just want to get on that plane, lie on a beach and hope I can stop taking medication for stress."

After putting down the first 20 dogs yesterday, Dr Gordon said: "I can't take it any more. There was a really wonderful friendly Alsatian that had to go. The names of the other dogs who went included Angel, Bonny, Foxie, Rocky and Nugget."