Christmas Holiday News!
 

I’ll compile some news for you to read before we’ll start preparing for a peaceful Christmas time.

Eettiset joulumarkkinat - Ethical Christmas Fair December 6th to 7th 2008
 

PAFi participated in two-day-event Ethical Christmas Fair at Wanha Yo-talo (Old Student House) in Helsinki. Here are some pictures of preparation for the event and the sales table all ready.

Our new cooperation partner Rakkaat Haukut (Beloved Doggies)

Of the cooperation between PAFi and Rakkaat Haukut you can read from its own page. 

Aftermath feelings of Inkeri and Tuuli of the job practice in Tg-Jiu
 

It’s been a while since Inkeri and Tuuli were on their job practice at Tg-Jiu shelter. Some of their feelings of the trip can be read from PAFi's website.
 

New PAFi-product: “a magnet reflector”!
 

PAFi has now a new product that not only is topical but also comes very handy. We hope as many of you as possible could purchase these reflectors to a good use! More information and pictures of magnet reflector.

Discount on PAFi products

PAFi has decided to give 15 per cent discount for its own products also to godparents and shelter godparents of Tg-Jiu. PAFi’s members have had the chance for quite some time now for this kind of discount. The quick ones still have time to do a little Christmas shopping in PAFi-shop!

Immaterial gifts
 

You also still have a chance to order immaterial gifts for Tg-Jiu shelter and give them to your special ones.

Dog food donated by Wipet Oy has been delivered to Tg-Jiu shelter
 

Last Monday with the help of Kalle Augustson we managed to send the dog food donated by Wipet Oy already in early-autumn for Tg-Jiu shelter. The food was much needed since the dogs eat twice as much food in winter season than they do in comparison to the warmer period. In November for some reason there was some kind of interruption or delay when it comes to regular food donations given by Brigitte Bardot Foundation so Carmena and Patricia have been very worried whether there’d be enough food. I got a message from Patricia telling that the donated food from Finland has already been given to the dogs and they really seem to like it! Patricia asked me to tell her and her mother’s most heartfelt thanks for the help!
 

Here are pictures of the food delivery arriving to the shelter. There were 54 boxes of food in total.

 
 

News from Tg-Jiu shelter
 

Dona-horse is still with her ex-owner but luckily Patricia gets to see her friend every day. Patricia has been very concerned over Dona’s condition and tells that the horse isn’t properly cared for. The ex-owner is most likely trying to wear Patricia and Carmena out by treating the horse this way and one day while Patricia passed by he kept yelling if Patricia would already want to buy Dona back. The fight over Dona is now in authorities’ hands and we hope that they would once do their job properly. In last negotiations Dona’s ex-owner had even promised to give Dona back if all the charges against him were be dropped.
 

Last Saturday Carmena and Patricia were attacked by an employee of the city shelter when Carmena had wanted to feed and nurse the sick dogs there. This employee had already wanted to go home and started threatening Carmena. When Patricia had arrived and asked what was wrong the man had attacked her! The women had managed to call Patricia’s husband and some friends to help and even the police. The man had already had some very big rocks in his hands and he had threatened Carmena as well as Patricia with them and also the people who had come to rescue. The man had continued to give death threats long after the police had arrived. Carmena and Patricia have asked the company that “maintains” the city shelter to replace the employee in question.
 

Patricia has had her hands full when taking nearly every day abandoned puppies to be vaccinated by Popescu. The water pipe of the warehouse of the shelter had also given out last Saturday and since it had been a holiday no help was available. After hours of working Patricia had managed to tie the pipe so that the whole warehouse wouldn’t flood. As you know, there are food sacks, medicine, blankets and towels etc. and of course dogs in the warehouse. It would’ve been a catastrophe if Patricia hadn’t been able to tie the pipe or the accident would’ve occurred at night. However, there had been water up to ankles so removing it had also taken some time.
 

Despite being extremely busy at the shelter Patricia and Carmena manage to worry about others, too, than only the dogs of the shelter, e.g. reindeers in Lapland. They have heard rumours that in Finland reindeers are chased to exhaustion in glaciers and shot from helicopters. According to these rumours most of these “hunted” reindeers are still fawns. I told Patricia that helicopters are used to guide reindeers from grazing to fences e.g. to separate the reindeers. Most of the yearly slaughtered reindeers are fawns of the same year. The rumour of reindeer hunting with helicopters must have started from these facts.
 

Rise in goddog fees starting from the beginning 2009
 

The goddog fees for Tg-Jiu dogs will rise to 15 euros per month starting from January. This was announced already early-autumn with some backing arguments and discussed e.g. in PAFi’s forum. To make godparenting possible for everyone we added the chance to be a shelter godparent (5 or 10 euros/month) in addition to being a godparent to a single dog.
 

If you have any questions relating to godparenting or goddog fees, please, send email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
 

Suggestions for European Union to improve animal protection
 

PAFi’s small work team came up with some suggestions to improve the animal protection especially in countries like Romania. The suggestions were asked by some Finnish representatives of European Union. The suggestions we drew up can be found here.

WSPA to visit Romania
 

Tracey Hampton, the representative of WSPA, informed that she will be quickly transferred to Bangkok so her follower Joy Lee will visit in Romania someday next year. Hopefully she will visit sooner than in the end of the year since we have really waited for WSPA to come.
 

The spurt to finish
 

During 2008 we have sent monthly 4.000 euros on average to Pro Animals Romania to cover the food and medicating expenses of Tg-Jiu shelter dogs and for animal protection. This week we will send our last donation this year, the donation being 5.000 euros. Some of these donations have been sent to the shelter in form of medicine and de-worming treatments. By the beginning of December about 55.000 euros worth of donations had been collected for these purposes.

By November 30^th 2008 there were 17.264,37 euros for the new shelter. Do you think we could finish the year with the sum being even closer to 20.000 euros??