Archives: Shelter

In March of 2012, an estimated 230 Pit Bulls were rescued from a dog-fighting syndicate operating in Laguna, Philippines.

The 230 rescued Pit Bulls that were rescued presented overwhelming challenges for the rescuers. Many of the animals were found in horrific conditions and very poor health. They were cruelly chained to posts buried in filthy mud with nothing more than cutout steel drums for shelter. They were terribly malnourished with wounds inflicted during dog fighting.

Despite extensive medical care, many of the dogs perished or had to be euthanized to end their suffering. Out of the 170 that lived, only a dozen or so were adopted and the surviving dogs continue to be looked after and medicated daily due to their ill health from the poor living conditions in Laguna.

CARA Welfare Philippines (Compassion and Responsibility for Animals), founded in 2000, has been at the forefront of taking care of the pit bulls since their rescue. With some borrowed funds and volunteers who put in a lot of hard work by taking time off from their regular jobs, CARA has been able to relocate the surviving animals to a sanctuary in Batangas. It cost thousands of dollars to set up the sanctuary: clearing the land, providing electricity and water, putting up a perimeter fence, building cages, paying for medical and vet bills and hiring caretakers, let alone the largest expense of all being food to feed the hungry dogs.

CARA is the recent grant recipient of Sam’s Cause: our anti dog fighting campaign and has been awarded a substantial amount of funding to help them get through their toughest times, but the need for support will continue for years to come. To learn more about their sanctuary and view a short video on some individual recovery cases, please visit the links below.

http://helpsavethepitbulls.com/

https://youtu.be/q0VppDkdCk0

Mid-Ohio Animal Welfare League is a non-profit organization volunteering on a regional level to assist animals in need within central and northeast Ohio while also providing access to low-cost spay and neuter clinics.

Established in 2005, Mid-Ohio Animal Welfare League has placed over 500 companion animals through a small network of foster homes. They typically pull from shelters and tend to gravitate towards assisting those animals who require medical attention. Additionally, Mid-Ohio Animal Welfare League offers sanctuary to animals entering their rescue that are found to be in need of hospice care or have extensive medical conditions that most adopters are not willing to take on.

Mid-Ohio Animal Welfare League’s primary focus is bringing low-cost sterilization services to the public with the assistance of RASCAL Unit, a neuter mobile clinic based out of Dublin, OH. The all-volunteer team firmly believes access to these services is a critical step in the process to stop the flood of unwanted companion animals into the shelter system. For this reason, they are always looking for funds to further defray the sterilization costs to the public.

A Shelter Support Grant from SPCA International will enable them to provide additional discounts for spay and neuter services without pulling from their own funds which are so desperately needed for the foster animals already in their care.

www.mawl.petfinder.com

www.facebook.com/midohioawl

Several years ago, a woman living in a large town in Serbia found a small kitten with his hind legs brutally cut off. With her care and treatment, this kitten grew up into a beautiful and happy tomcat, but unfortunately did not survive to see his 2nd birthday because sepsis set in. In his short life in this world, this woman loved him and his story became a painfully true tale of courage, hope and faith. He left his legacy to all cat lovers who have heard of him and he will never be forgotten because he is the reason, Cat Shelter Felix was born.

The shelter located outside of town, was founded in 2010 with the hopes of creating a sanctuary for the protection of stray felines on the streets. The goal of the all volunteer, non-profit organization is to help and improve the welfare of felines in the Vojvodina region of Northern Serbia.

Cat Shelter Felix has never been provided with any kind of support from the State in the form of Governmental funding to help or improve conditions for the animals at their facility. Unfortunately, due to the severity of the winter in 2011, the structure of their building experienced a lot of damage due to the prolonged snow build up, freezing ice and temperatures. The roof collapsed, and the animals were put at great risk. Despite financial hardships, this repair work needs to get done properly so that all the rescued cats at Cat Shelter Felix are safe and secure for the next winter.

Their efforts are ongoing and always a struggle, please consider supporting Cat Shelter Felix through our Shelter Grant Program today.

Website: http://catshelterfelix.com/
Blog: http://novisadcats.blogspot.com/
Webshop: http://www.cafepress.co.uk/catshelterfelix

You may have driven by the freestanding shelter on the way to the Cape, in the small town of Plymouth, Massachusetts but the work that The Helping Hands for the Plymouth Animal Shelter is no small affair.

The three volunteer co-founders did not know each other when they met at the shelter every Tuesday morning some 10 years ago but they all had the same mission in mind. They knew that they needed to help the shelter with much neededveterinary care, food for the animals, litter for the cats and cleaning supplies, so they formed this non-profit organization that raises funds to pay for daily care and medical treatment for the animals in the shelter in the fall of 2008.

Because of the downfall of the economy, they use more than 80% of the funds that they raise through auctions to assist with veterinary care for low-income families.  Several local groups have come jumped on board to help raise money for specific items.  Two years ago, they raised enough funds to complete the cleaning of the outdoor dog area, including putting all new gravel down, a new fence  and the purchase of 10 dog houses.

Needs are ongoing, and we are proud to support their efforts because of wonderful supporters like you through SPCAI’s Shelter Program.

http://www.petfinder.com/shelters/MA80.html
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Helping-Hands-for-the-Plymouth-Animal-Shelter-Inc/113421402011694

SOS Galgos was established nearly 14 years ago, in order to report the unimaginable cruelty inflicted on Spain’s most abused breed of dog Spanish Greyhounds or Galgos. Their efforts are put forth through the media both on an national and international level in order to expose Spain’s widespread and quiet kept hunting traditions that involve torturing and killing close to 60,000 dogs a year. Galgos are repeatedly tortured during the hunting season by the hunters and trainers and then left to die a slow gruesome death when they are deemed no longer useful because it is believed that the longer they suffer, the more prosperous the following season will be. Some of the horrid methods are hanging the dogs by their neck in trees so that their hind legs barely touch the ground and they sway back and forth for days until they starve and die of exhaustion, thrown into pits and wells without food or water, burned alive and by inserting painful metal rods into their mouths so they cannot chew or breathe properly.

SOS Galgos strives to promote the Galgo as a companion animal within Spain, and to educate children in schools to help break the cycle of cruelty and promote empathy towards all animals.

Over the years SOS Galgos has managed to keep a balance with its rescue work rehoming nearly 2500 Galgos, educating children in schools with the assistance of the local police force and by working at lobbying to bring the attention of the plight of the Galgos to members of the European Parliament.

SOS Galgos continues to work tirelessly in this direction because its team strongly believes that the way forward is to put international pressure on the current Spanish government to help promote an improvement of the situation regarding this cruelty.

SPCAI has visited Spain multiple times since our partnership with SOS Galgo began in 2013 to work directly with them in their efforts to one day put a stop to this shocking brutality. In 2016, SPCAI committed a $40,000 in two grants from the Shelter Support Fund to their project. These funds will be used to help SOS Galgos build an educational facility to promote humane education, advocacy and Spanish Greyhound adoptions.

Ways to Help & More Information:

Please sign the petition to help amplify our voices.

Watch a short moving video by the SPCAI team to learn more about this terrible problem

Watch the Documentary: “February: The Fear of Spanish Greyhounds”

Spanish Greyhound Humane Education Center Opening in Spain – January 11th 2017

March Against Cruelty to Spanish Greyhounds in Spain – June 5th 2015

This Abuse Will Stop! – June 13th 2014

Testifying to the Spanish Congress – March 19h 2014

http://www.sosgalgos.com

Ever since Sasha can remember, he always felt sorry for little puppies and would always try and feed them whenever he saw them. It was in 2008 that he really started to notice that many of dogs he was trying to help were disappearing – what he realized was that the Nis pound was killing more  and more dogs daily as a way of ‘managing’ the population. Sasha would often notice that his friends, the street dogs he fed on regular basis, would suddenly go missing. They were being caught by the dog catchers and murdered (the methods used to ‘euthanize’ dogs are unspeakable). Sasha, because of his enormous love for animals and generous heart, now runs the largest shelter in the city of Nis, Serbia.

Most of the dogs in his care have been taken off of the streets as young pups, usually sick or injured. They have been nursed back to health and now live in a large pack in an unused riding school that he rents from money out of his own pocket. At night the animals sleep in stables to keep them safe as passers by have been known to throw poison over the fence in attempt to kill the dogs for they are seen as rodents to many in this harsh land.

Sasha is lucky enough to have 4 workers who have not been paid for months but continue to devote their full time efforts because of their love for the dogs as well, but how long can they keep running on empty?

Recently, one of our concerned supporters alerted us that Sasha ran out of funds completely and the dogs had gone for 2 whole days without any food. Some animal lovers came together to form a Facebook Page to help Sasha out and we quickly became part of that equation. With your generosity, an International Shelter Grant was delivered to Sasha’s Dogs. Please keep up the good work by spreading awareness of our Shelter Program so that we can help more animal advocates like Sasha around the globe.

Read more about Ana Johnston, SPCAI Guest Blogger & Traveling Animal Advocate's visit to Sasha's Shelter.

www.facebook.com/groups/456209041122229

Many people might remember the North Berwick area in Scotland as once the site of a very famous large open-airswimming pool. Others might know it for its rich history, as the area becomes quite a popular tourist destination in the Nineteenth Century. Once a vivid and prosperous region, the 1980’s economic downfall left the town an eyesore; that is, until the Scottish Seabird Centre found it’s home. Located just at the inner harbour, the centre brought new life back into the area, which took nearly 10 years of hard work and dedication to develop.
On May 21st, 2000 the Scottish Seabird Centre was officially opened and is graciously supported by a community wide support of many volunteers to this day.

One of the attractions that drive the most visitors to the site is the infamous Puffin. Puffins are stocky, short-winged and short-tailed birds, with black upper parts and white or brownish-grey under parts. The colorful outer part of their bill is shed after their short breeding season, which begins in March, revealing a smaller and duller true bill beneath.

The SOS Puffin Protection Program is the Scottish Seabird Centre's award winning mission to save the puffins on the surrounding islands. Due to a giant plant called the Tree Mallow, the puffin colonies became endangered. The number of birds dropped from 28,000 to just a few thousand in a very short period of time.

The centre provides a non-threatened environment for the puffins to call home while they prepare for their breeding season while also creating an entertaining and enchanting performance for its spectators. They strut around in their elaborate ‘costumes’ and bright orange feet supplying quite the party.

This project has had enormous resonance with the local and wider community and the response to call for volunteers has been impressive; however, as a long-term project, it is essential that 'Save Our Puffins' is financially viable. The importance of the project lies in the deadly threat to a vital puffin habitat and its success is in the already-improving situation from the constructed habitat. 
With help from supporters of the SPCA International Shelter Program, we can help them continue their incredible work on behalf of the puffin population.

See a direct report as one of our team members adopts a Puffin on a trip to Scotland!

www.seabird.org

SPCA International first partnered up with TerrAnimal, an animal welfare and protection project group in Ecuador, for a successful spay/neuter campaign in early 2013. This year, we are excited to be joining forces with them again to be the proud sponsors of the First Forum on Public Policy for Animal Protection.

The international forum will focus on the importance of the safeguard of animals in public health policies stipulated in the Ecuadorian Constitution. The purpose of the conference is to exchange ideas and experiences amongst panelists and attendees in to search for particular strategies and solutions to the problem of dog and cat overpopulation in the cities of Ecuador, taking into account technical, scientific and also ethical practices.

Experts in the field of animal welfare from all the over the globe will be participating in this inaugural event slated for April of 2014. The general public interested in animal protection issues will also be invited and given a chance to speak their thoughts and concerns in hopes that greater awareness amongst the locals and humane collaboration will supervene.

www.terranimal.ec

The Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) has been dedicated to the protection of animals and the promotion of humane treatment since 1954.  It runs an animal shelter that currently houses 45 dogs and 186 cats rescued from cruelty or neglect.  The volunteer-based organization rehabilitates these animals in the hope of finding them new homes and a second chance at a good life.  The PAWS shelter also serves as an animal-welfare information center and a low-cost spay-neuter clinic.  It receives an average of 50 calls a day concerning animal welfare, care, and control, and helps local government officials with many animal-related challenges.  PAWS campaigns actively against dogfights, horsefights, and wild animals being used for entertainment. It lobbied for the Philippine Animal Welfare Act, passed in 1998 – the country's first national law prohibiting cruelty to animals.

SPCA International is pleased to honor PAWS with a Shelter of the Week grant that will go toward purchasing large water tanks.  With no running water at the shelter, these tanks will make caring for the many dogs and cats in residence easier for staff and volunteers.

You can donate to this organization by sending a check to:
The Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS)
87 Small Horseshoe Drive
New Manila
Quezon City 1112
Philippines

Web site
The Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS)

Playa Animal Rescue is a non-profit, no-kill animal shelter located in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. The organization, which was founded in 2011, is dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating injured and abandoned dogs, and to finding permanent, loving homes for each of them. Although their primary focus is on dogs, they also  work with other local and international animal rescue organizations to get help for cats and kittens in need.

Playa Animal Rescue also has a wide range of community outreach and educational programs that promotes responsible pet ownership, adoption and spay and neuter clinics.

SPCA International is proud to once again award Playa Animal Rescue with a Shelter Support grant for all their hard work and efforts for the animals in their community.

http://playaanimalrescue.org/

https://www.facebook.com/PlayaAnimalRescue