Puglia in Southern Italy is a beautiful place, with wonderful food, wonderful weather and the people are generally warm and friendly. Unfortunately many do not respect domestic animals ......
We need your help to help them, the animals. By MAKING A DONATION or SPONSORING AN ANIMAL you can help us to continue to feed and provide medication and veterinary care for these poor unfortunate abandoned and stray dogs and cats.
We re-home those we can, but it is not an easy task here, you can also help us by adopting an animal.
In my diary you can catch up with all the animals, happy moments, trials and tribulations, successes and failures ....... but first a little background:
My name is Val, I am English, my husband Mino is Italian. We live in the Southern Salento region of Puglia, in the "heel" of Italy's "boot".
This is a lovely place to live, with a good climate and wonderful food, but we have here, a huge problem with sick, stray and abandoned dogs and cats.
We currently have 24 dogs in our home and 6 cats. To say it is hard work is an understatement, but we are not complaining. But we do need a little help! Its not for ourselves we are asking,but for the animals!
We met and married in England , after a few years we left to live in the Algarve, Portugal, where we saved our first abandoned dog (Lady). By the time we left there , we had eight dogs and two cats, whom were all micro chipped and held pet passports.
We called it the incredible journey, which indeed it was. We drove them from the Algarve to the South of Italy. Quite a nightmare! It took us five days, with lots of stops, because of the animals. Not a journey I would like to repeat very often, thats for sure.
Once in the South of Italy, we began to see the problem was far worse than Portugal, the amount of sick and abandoned animals was appalling.
The bad luck we have encountered here has been phenomenal and it still seems to go on.
There are so many poor sick,stray and abandoned dogs and cats that we feed regularly. We do the rounds in our village every day, and make sure they have food and water. We seem to find more each time we go out. We live in a seaside village,thats practically deserted in the winter months,this is probably why its become a dumping ground.
Most of these animals are such beautiful friendly creatures, it breaks our hearts, We want to bring them all into our home. Of course this is not possible. As it is, we have far too many. Most of the ones we have taken in are sick or with broken or damged limbs. Just discarded because of this! We then get these poor animals treated. Our vets here are superb!
There are also currently 12 puppies that we are feeding. All of varying ages, some approachable , some not. Some I don't think will survive this winter. I have now found four little kittens, not from the same litter.
They are all treated as pets and thoroughly spoiled. We have re homed a few along the way, but its a difficult task. There are only a few English people in this area of Italy, and those that are here have at least one or two cats and dogs already.
Our aim is,one day, to raise enough money to buy and fence a minimum of 1.000 sq. metres of land and to build a refuge for the sick and older stray and abandoned dogs.
Any donation would, also, help provide us with expenses for continuing veterinary consultations and medication not to mention the much needed, bucket loads of food we go through.
We are still doing all we can,but now we need help! By GIVING A DONATION you can help us to keep up our work here,and try and make these poor animals lives a little better.
These poor babies and many like them have to scavenge for food, some of them are so thin.
This is a poem about all the stray dogs and cats everywhere,dedicated by our very good friend Marie Turner(pooka)
It is very sad but oh so true!
Dear God please send me somebody who'll care! I'm tired of running, I'm sick with despair. My body is aching, it's so racked with pain. And Dear God I pray as I run in the rain, That someone will love me and give me a home. A warm cozy bed I can call my own My last owner neglected me and chased me away To rummage in garbage and live as a stray. But now God I'm tired and hungry and cold. And I'm afraid that I'll never grow old. They've chased me with sticks and hit me with stones While I run in the streets just looking for bones! I'm not really bad God, please help if you can. For I have become just a "VICTIM OF MAN!" I'm wormy, dear God, I'm ridden with fleas While all I want is an owner to please! If you find one for me God, I'll try to be good I won't run away and I'll do as I should. I don't think I'll make it too long on my own, Cause I'm getting so weak and I'm so all alone. Each night as I sleep in the bushes I cry, Cause I'm so afraid God, that I'm gonna die! And I've got so much love and devotion to give, That I should be given a new chance to live. So Dear God PLEASE, PLEASE answer my prayer And send me somebody who WILL really care...
My name is Val, I am English, my husband Mino is Italian. We live in the Southern Salento region of Puglia, in the "heel" of Italy's "boot".
