The Road Less Travelled – Visiting 200 shelters

What 17,000km Taught Us About Shelters, South Africa, and Showing Up

If you want to understand the true state of animal welfare in South Africa, you start on the outskirts of towns. On gravel roads. On stretches of tar with more potholes than paint. On routes, Google Maps confidently promises will be “just fine” and absolutely aren’t.

Over the past year, Louise, Mandy and Tracy travelled more than 17,000 kilometres across all nine provinces, visiting shelters many people never see, never talk about, and often forget exist. Not because they’re unimportant, but because they’re hard to reach. And that, in many ways, is exactly the point.

The Roads That Don’t Make the Brochures

There were roads that rattled teeth and tested suspension. Roads that turned into dust, mud, or nothing at all. Roads where cell signal disappeared long before the last house did. Roads that wind past informal settlements, industrial edges, and places where services are thin and resources even thinner.

These are not the roads featured in glossy annual reports.
But they are the roads shelters travel every single day.

For many shelter teams, isolation isn’t a metaphor; it’s geography. Being “out of town” often means being out of reach of donors, vets, volunteers, and visibility. Yet the animals still arrive. The needs don’t pause. And the work continues.

The Reality on the Ground

Getting stuck in the mud was part of the adventure

What we found wasn’t uniform, and that’s important.

Some shelters operate with structure, policies, and systems. Others function on pure grit, love, and a prayer that tomorrow will bring help. Many are under-resourced, overwhelmed, and exhausted, not because they don’t care, but because caring has come at a personal cost for too long.

We met people doing the best they could with what they had.
We met shelters desperate not for judgment, but for guidance.
We met teams who had never been asked what they thought would help.

And everywhere we went, one message echoed clearly:

“We want to do better,  we just don’t want to be punished for where we are.”

Why Every Shelter Had to Be Reached

Covering all nine provinces wasn’t about ticking boxes.
It was about inclusion.

Urban shelters, rural shelters, formal organisations, informal rescues, well-funded spaces, and those barely holding on — all needed a seat at the table. Because minimum standards cannot be built from the top down. They have to be shaped by the full reality of the sector, not just the parts that are easiest to access.

Collaboration only works when everyone is invited.

That meant long days. Early starts. Late arrivals.  Notes taken in cars. And the determination that no shelter would be excluded simply because the road to get there was hard.

What the Journey Changed

Those 17,000 kilometres didn’t just map shelters, they mapped truth.

They showed us where support is urgently needed.
They highlighted gaps that paperwork alone could never reveal.
They reminded us that standards must be practical, realistic, and compassionate, or they will fail the very people they’re meant to support.

Most importantly, they reinforced why this work matters.

Because behind every difficult road is a team that showed up anyway.
Behind every remote shelter is a group of animals relying on humans who refuse to give up.
And behind every kilometre travelled is a commitment to do this with shelters, not to them.

Still Travelling, Still Listening

The road less travelled isn’t a phase of this project. It’s its foundation.

The work continues, guided by what we’ve seen, what we’ve heard, and what shelters themselves have told us they need. Inclusive. Collaborative. Grounded in reality. And driven by the belief that every shelter counts, no matter how far off the beaten path they are.

Sometimes, the hardest roads lead to the most important conversations.
And those are always worth the journey.