16th Newsletter: When miracles are that simple ...

Stray dog Erwin – lying in his corner again, totally relaxed, now fixed he has a better quality of life!

Dear Friends, Donors and Helpers – in short: dear Amigos-de-Lucky Family!
Together we have helped and together we have given many animals a better life and have saved many lives, together we have made one or the other small "miracle" happen…

First of all, as always, I would like to give you the facts and figures of our spay/neutering-campaign in February 2012:

• 256 animals were fixed (in 12 work days) – 132 of them were female dogs, 46 male dogs, 54 were cats and 24 tom-cats – as always all of the animals were treated against parasites
• 173 puppies were spared living on the streets (which usually ends fatally after a couple of months)
• 7 other operations were performed e. g. eye excisions, leg fractures and umbilical hernias
• 51 further consultations/medical treatments took place
• 5 dogs were successfully treated against CTVT (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canine_transmissible_venereal_tumor)
  
• 11 abandoned animals found a new home
• 636 car miles were driven
• 2 additional cars were in use, not to forget the fantastic helpers, who picked up patients and returned them

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Thanks for your donations!

Many thanks, that you donated so generously. With a total of 16.150 US$ we were able to fix 256 animals in Sanchez and Las Terrenas and to treat many more medically.

You can look at the pictures of the dogs and cats in the Donation Calendar - there were exceptionally cute and lovely ones, but also very poor animals.

With us very cent of the donations goes to 100% to the animals, there are neither administrative, personnel nor other costs.

I thank you for your trust and hope, that you will go on supporting us.

Yours, Miriam

15th Newsletter: When love makes us (even) stronger...

Dear Friends and Donors,

somehow the days and weeks have drifted away – and now it’s already the 1st of December – high time to give you an update on our activities.

We spent September taking intensive care of some extremely difficult cases; Salomon, Blanca and further hurt terrapins, then the sad message of bereavement in my closest family reached me. Two days later I was sitting in a plane to Germany; not only to give emotional support in Berlin, but also to sort everything out on-site.

Buschi (my husband) stayed behind alone in Las Terrenas with all the animals (and the associated problems...) – thank God Puschel (see NL 14) had been taken in by our friend Nicole, who looks after the old stinker lovingly and has given him a permanent home in his old age. Thanks to Puschel’s sponsors his (medical) supply is ensured.

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Mäuschen (in place of all animals) and me (still with a bandaged head) – by the way, over here the beautiful red-blossoming Poinsettias (Christmas stars) get tall as trees...

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Thank you for your vote!

With 308 votes we could climb to Place 31 – with a total of 1.004 participants it is a great result, even if we have to win any prize money of course ...

We are pleased however that other animal welfare projects have won places 3 to 5 have won. Maybe next year another competition like this will take place, then with your help, we will try it again .

https://www.wunsch.berliner-sparkasse.de/

Our dear friends, hard-working helpers and generous donors,
there are times when it’s so easy to help and then there are times when you find yourself at your limits, confronted with resistances and above all so much misery, that it is hard to bear... And another thing has to be taken into account – we are not getting any younger and need longer to recharge our “batteries”. On top of that, after every castration campaign some of our patients “stick” with us, so that in the meantime our pack of dogs has run up to a total of 16. Therefore please excuse my long silence.

As usual I would first of all like to announce the numbers and facts of the castration campaign in May/June 2011:

• 216 castrated animals (in 12 workdays) – of those 133 were female dogs, 32 male dogs, 40 cats, 11 tom-cats – of course, as usual, all animals were treated against parasites as well
• 14 other operations such as amputations, umbilical hermia, bladder-operations, eye-removals and the likes
• 68 further consultations/medical treatments
• 5 abandoned animals were adopted by new owners
• 78 kg of medical material was used – many thanks to all the generous donors/supporters B. Braun Vet Care GmbH,Martin-Luther-Krankenhaus/Paul Gerhardt Diakonie, Vétoquinol GmbH, cell pharm GmbH, Albrecht GmbH, Wahl GmbH, Bayer Health Care AnimalHealth Dom.Rep., WAHL Agrar-Fachmarkt, Wilhelm Voigt Apotheke Berlin-Köpenick and Tierarztpraxis Maurice Bob
• 798 kilometres were driven
• 4 additional cars were in action along with fantastic helpers picking up patients and dropping them off again
• 39 washing machine loads of towels, op-shirts etc were washed
• 10 days of tropical, torrential constant rain, meaning that we had water up to our knees and had to take care that the dog crates didn't turn into boats and drift off ...
• 12 delicious luncheons prepared with much love by our hard-working helpers
• 5 days of selling from our flea-market stall with the proceeds going to the benefit of the animals (thanks for all your great donated items!)
• 1 nicked photo camera – that is to say mine – so that the choice of photos is a bit poor this time...

please read on ...

13th Newsletter: How much love can one heart hold?

Dear friends of the Dominican animals,
I sometimes wonder how much more love my heart can hold – there is always room for a new fate, another poor creature, a stray dog who looks at me with big eyes... In more than seven years about 3,500 animals have passed through my hands, some stayed for a while, others I only treated or fed once. But all these animals have one thing in common – they filled my heart with love, affected my thoughts and feelings. And I know I will set my heart on every further animal that comes into my life. Like on

Eulalia, the hispaniola barn owl (Tyto glaucops)

Christmas Eve – a working day for us, at our stall and information desk – became the day of the owl. We saw a poacher carrying a barn owl that he was trying to sell. The poor creature’s legs were tied together (the rope had already caused deep wounds!) and the totally underfed and shy nocturnal animal was in panic in the broad daylight and confronted with the crowd. There was turmoil and it more or less came to blows, but in the end we managed to retrieve the owl from the poacher and Buschi quickly brought it home. In the meantime I tried to explain to the resentful crowd why wild animals are so important for the ecological system and don't belong in the hands of humans. Apart from that, hunting wild animals was prohibited in March 2009 („Any activity leading to death, harassment, mutilation or capture of wild animals will be punished“). When the crowd had left, an old man – surely about 90 years of age – came up to me, put his arms around me, squeezed me and said: „I thank you for your respect toward nature, unfortunately the others have lost all respect.“

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12th Newsletter: A Year of hope comes to an end...

Dear animal friends, sponsors, generous donators and hard-working helpers,
as the year draws to an end we would like to draw a balance – a balance that we, as such a tiny organisation, can be proud of. We certainly don't have to hide behind any of the big organisations…far from it!

Castrations
During the last 12 months (including the last 11 working days in December) we were able to castrate 740 animals altogether:

• 550 female dogs
• 80 male dogs
• 86 cats
• 20 tom-cats
• 4 male rabbits
• 337 abortions during the castration

Other operations and medical treatments

• 81 other operations
  
• 1264 other medical treatments
  

Food

• ca. 1,3 tons of food have been fed to the stray dogs/animals in need

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Dear friends,
the last month has yet again been a roller coaster ride of emotions...The death of poor stray dog “Katastrophe” upset us all verymuch. Of course, we cannot rescue every animal and any animalwelfare activist would advise you not to let things like that get toyou, but still each and every loss of an animal is a real tragedy tome and breaks my heart every time :-((

Then we received the pleasant news that we were on the shortlistfor the Goldene Pfote (Golden Paw). We were on the edges ofour seats with suspense during the whole voting phase. And animal-friend Winni was clicking his fingers sore day and night, togive us at least a small chance against those huge contestants,but after a couple of days the results were adjusted and multiplevotes deleted. After the voting dead-line the jury voted us onplace four and we were very disappointed – another hope destroyed.Just when I wanted to inform you by e-mail, we got acall from TASSO: place three had withdrawn its candidature; wehad moved up and were now one of the winners at last. Andagain tears flew, but this time they were tears of joy and happiness!!!Since we couldn't attend the award ceremony in Pfullingenin person, I sent this short acknowledgement to TASSO.

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10th Newsletter: When hope bears fruit...

Dear friends of the Dominican animals,

at last we are online! Hard-working Christian attended to our website and you can follow all our news and pictures on the internet. Now all we need are translators for Spanish, English and French who have time to translate our texts and then we can go international!!! Maybe you know someone who could help?

But not only Christian has been working hard, we have also been able to achieve some good results, for example during our monthly castration-campaign with Dr vet Angel De La Cruz from Sosua. The campaign took place on the 31st of July and the 4th of September. We castrated 20 female and 3 male dogs, 3 cats and one tom-cat and also carried out diverse other medical treatments in our mobile animal hospital. The great thing about it isn't only that because of it much animal-misery will be avoided in future, but that the Dominicans are showing more and more interest in their animals. All the dogs that were brought to us by their owners were in top-form: well fed, well-tended fur, partly equipped with flea-collars and vaccination certificates plus they all had names (for example Coffee and Wheat(beer)) and their owners treated them affectionately. Some even stayed for the whole process and touchingly looked after all of the dogs (not only their own) during the recovery phase. There was much stroking and comforting going on. To see, how at last our educational work is bearing fruits makes us particularly happy as this is still not the case in the rest of the country. As you can see, there is still a lot of work to be done...

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9th Newsletter: New ways to new hope ...

Dear animal-friends,

you have had to wait a little longer for a new newsletter, but there are just too many patients who have to be looked after and so the administrative work has had to wait...

Ever since our big castration campaign, there have been a great many changes within the population. Whenever I drive through Las Terrenas and its surroundings, people stop me and ask me to have a look at their animals. Often it's just small things the animals need, such as deworming, remedies against dermal parasites or just some explanation about correct feeding. Unfortunately there are also difficult cases. Additionally there are still many female dogs we haven’t castrated yet.

In the same way I was called upon by some tourists who had found a dog with her seven puppies in an empty hotel at the beach – the dog-family was living there between litter and debris...

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