Animal help in the Dominican Republic - for a better cooperation between humans and animals
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.“
We treated Eulalia – we fed her raw chicken liver at night, which she devoured greedily and we gave her homoeopathic medicine, since she was already showing signs of abnormal behaviour and to quicken the recovery.
She put on weight just fine, began to defend herself and attacked us as well as the food (a good sign!). She started flying from branch to branch in her aviary. After three weeks she was strong enough to be released, after a short rest in a palm tree she soared into the evening sky – fair well, Eulalia, we wish you always pleasant flights and good hunting!
Frodo the Miniature-Pinscher-Chihuahua-Puppy
In the last week of January I got a call from a German tourist. Her daughter had fallen in love with a puppy she had bought and now wanted to take back with her to Germany. It wouldn’t have been possible to fly the dog out with the existing papers/vaccinations, especially since he hadn't reached minimum age. But we found another way, which involved taking the dog to France and having it leave for Germany via Paris ten days later. Since Frodo's state of health wasn't at its best either, he spent the interim with us. As tiny as the little guy was, he had character for ten big ones... His favourite playmate was our Great-Dane-Mix Onyx.
For his voyage to cold France and respectively Germany, I made him a coat out of an old sock. His owner told me later, that Frodo rather wears this sock that the chihuahua coat that they especially bought for him. ;-)
Frodo swept me off my feet – when we go to Germany next time, we will certainly visit him.
Emma, the Antillean Slider (Trachemys stejnegri – belongs to the family of marsh turtles)
And again we had to retrieve a local wild animal from some poachers. Buschi found Emma in the street, where she was hanging on a wire that had been pierced through her shell, upside down on a branch in the blazing sun she was being offered for sale. Apart from the hole, her shell was wounded at the side and she was bleeding heavily.
We treated Emma with homoeopathic medicine, which didn't only stop the bleeding quickly, but also supported the healing of the shell. To eliminate the risk of infection, we kept Emma for a couple of days for observation. Our household is adapted to many kinds of animals (we have dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, ducks, geese and chickens), but exotics such as barn owls and turtles do present us with new challenges... We put Emma into our wooden bath tub (which we hardly use anymore due to lack of time), where she could dive into water on the one side, but also had the possibility to stay dry on a stone we had put in for her on the other. There was one question left: what to feed her??? We offered her different kinds of meat, which she liked, and to provide some variety we went to an adjacent cow trough where we caught her some tadpoles. Since we hadn't changed the water in the bathtub for some time, the algae provided the vegetarian diet.
We actually wanted to take a little rest in January. We had planned to spend three weeks in our farm further north, we had to postpone and shorten that stay due to tending to Eulalia. So not only did we pack ten of our twelve dogs and our two cats into the car, but we also took Emma to the farm with us. There she was able to fatten herself up on tadpoles for two more days from a former horse trough, before we released her in the swampy part of our plot, where she could decide for herself where she wanted to go, e.g. further down to the river. You can even set your heart on a relatively unsocial animal...
Calypso the American castrel (Falco sparverius)
Another nest robbery, another poacher earning his money by being cruel to animals and another new experience for us... we had already successfully raised and released two barn owls, but a little hawk is something very special. Calypsos biggest problem was the way the poacher had „trimmed“ his wings – the lower part of his right wing had been cut off transversely along with the quills!!! As soon as Calypso had fattened up a little I began to flight-train him. Despite his mutilation he had to learn to fly with it. On his first try he just plopped down onto the grass, after that he tried to work his wings and on the third day he got upwind, soared over our fence and disappeared into the jungle.
Since then Buschi has had to retrieve Calypso out of different trees in the vicinity – sometimes we had to saw off branches – because flying into a tree is one thing, getting down quite another one... After one week Calypso showed us, what a flying talent he had become and from that moment we left him his freedom.
Now freedom is a nice thing – but a 5-star-restaurant is even nicer ;-)
Calypso still comes flying to me every day for food, he has grown, his landings are precise and as a proud bird of prey he knows how to use his claws, but still the closeness to his „mum“ is comforting. We are very proud of his progress. One day he will cut the cord completely, find himself a pretty female and hopefully ensure the continued existence of these majestic birds. He will always have a special place in my heart.
We have helped many other patients over the past four months; we ran another castration campaign and found new homes for a couple of dogs. Most of the time we were able to help and the animals recovered, sadly we lost three dogs to distemper and our loved gander Dagobert died of a virus. We had deep concerns about our patient Blanca (she fought with a very deep and maggot-infested wound), but she made it. Foster dog Onyx – he will be castrated in May – is in a love frenzy with our foster dog Spotty (also not castrated...), who will be staying with us until her departure for Germany in two months (dog no. 13!!!). Our permanent resident Mäuschen’s health is an up and down – but she is very buoyant and in spite of her handicap she runs (!!!) after the horses at our finca...
By the way, Mäuschen and Onyx would be very happy about new sponsors!
Meanwhile lots of very nice animal friends from Germany, Switzerland and Austria have come over to visit us. Not only did they bring lots of great medicine, they also brought donations such as collars etc. and showed a lot of interest in our work. Thanks to all of you!
Plans for the next big castration campaign have been keeping us busy for weeks now. Thanks to the generosity of some companies and donors and after the great reaction to our charity appeal last week, we only need another 1,694,-€ to go through with the campaign. I know that there is lots of room for love in your hearts – love for the Dominican animals in need – with your contributions this love will go directly to the dogs, cats, birds, tortoises…
I thank everyone involved that we can carry on with this wonderful work; all of you have a place in my heart.
Thank you.
Yours, Miriam
