Greetings from Tg-Jiu shelter, Carmena and Patricia

Let’s start with Dona’s story. Dona the horse is once again back in Carmena and Patricia’s tender care from her abusive owner who stole Dona from Carmena’s private yard last November. Dona has been treated very badly by her owner and she’s suffering from pretty severe injuries and respiratory problems. Luckily, Dona has a strong will to live and survive and being under a vet’s as well as Carmena and Patricia’s care she has a chance to recover and finally get to enjoy her life without fear of what will come. Dona’s story with recent updates is coming soon!

Carmena and Patricia have gotten an extra pair of hands, another worker, to the shelter. This person has worked at the shelter before, between years 2003-2005, but spent some time in jail due to violence against his brother. Though hiring this man to help seems frightening, the truth is that every helping hand is needed and when someone offers to help, you just need to accept it. This worker has never shown any sign of violence towards animals and it is very likely that the incident he’s been charged with has been something personal.

Patricia has taken even more responsibility of the animal protection matters of Gorj County. She does check-ups regularly e.g. at dog shelters maintained by the cities of the county, observing the conditions in them. Usually it’s Patricia who runs to help when Pro Animals Romania gets reported of animal cruelty.

At this point I’d like to tell about an animal cruelty case that will hopefully end happily. Patricia received a call of a dog that some children had thrown as a puppy into the basement floor of an apartment building already in January. The dog has been fed and given water alright but the dog has spent all these months in the basement almost alone and in darkness. Now the dog has started to bark alone in his cell and the people living in the building have gotten so annoyed of it that they have planned to kill the dog (most likely poison it). Some of the residents, however, felt sorry for the dog and called Pro Animals Romania asking for help. It goes without saying that the dog has become very fearful of people and whenever a person steps to the basement floor, the dog runs away to a tiny nook among the pipes, staying out of the reach.

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Since the dog always escapes out of reach, Patricia tried to save the dog by feeding it sedative hidden in the food. The dog ate it but unfortunately went to sleep to its hideout.

Patricia has tried to find a dog trap to save the dog from its prison but it seems these traps are hard to find in Romania since so far even large animal welfare organizations don’t seem to have any. If we don’t come up with any other solution, we must send a proper trap to Pro Animals Romania. The mailing costs of these kinds of traps are high even as a regular mail, up to hundreds of euros (and the delivery is several weeks), and e.g. as an express the cost is mindblowing. That’s why we wish the dog trap could still be found in Romania.

In the city shelter next to Pro Animals Romania’s shelter dogs keep mysteriously dying and disappearing and Pro Animals Romania has asked the police to investigate these disappearings. As usual the police are quite reluctant to do anything and so far not much help can be expected from their behalf. Carmena and Patricia are doing everything they can but since they are not authorities, there is only so much they can do.

The weather is already very summery in Tg-Jiu and that also means that the ticks have raided the shelter. The tick problem is awfully troublesome and treating hundreds of dogs is both expensive and hard. Carmena and Patricia acquired some lotion against ticks from a local vet to fight the tick problem with.

Patricia has also learned to give dogs fluids internally since it’s been very difficult to take dogs all the time to the local vet to be given fluids. Usually the dogs needing fluids are those who get their first shots and due to the vaccine the dogs lose their appetite and stop drinking for a few days.

Since the beginning of the year Pro Animals Romania has provided the chance for a free spaying/neutering for the pets of poorer petowners. After hesitating in the beginning, this opportunity has now been taken positively. We have the chance to cover the spaying/neutering costs of approx. 5 pets a month (for some reason all the dogs have been female) and hopefully we could be able to cover the costs of even more pets.

PAFi’s support products

PAFi has new t-shirts so be ready to order some ;) The shirts can be found from PAFi shop.
There are two different types of t-shirts and four different colors.

Please, do remember also other PAFi products like dog blankets. The summer season is soon here and the blankets are much needed on hot summer days.
The profits of the products are directed unabridged for the homeless dogs of Tg-Jiu.

Other matters

The next shelter trip has been set and our group of travellers is ready to go. Due to not having a driver for a group any larger, there’s unfortunately no room for any other traveller. We will travel to Tg-Jiu on June 27th and return July 1st and conveniently we will also celebrate Carmena’s 50th birthday on the spot.

Carmena and Patricia have found a triangle-shaped 10.000 sq metre site. We are now trying to figure out if it’s suitable for our needs and if it is, we’ll be likely to buy it and hopefully start the building of the new shelter as soon as possible. The search for the lot has been a long, painful road since the prices have so far been completely out of the question and the soil of the cheap sites has been completely useless for our demand. We are gladly accepting donations for the new shelter since without the necessary funding we won’t be able to proceed in the project. More info of the project .

In early-April PAFi joined as a support member of Heinolan Lintutarhat (Heinola’s bird sanctuary) after hearing of its despair. A small group of PAFi team members has promised to give a little hand by creating new, official homepages for the Lintutarhat if they happen to need ones and if the city of Heinola is willing to accept the help. This way PAFi wants to show the importance of local helping we so much emphasize in our work and this time the local help is needed also here in our homeland.

With sunny spring regards,

Kiia

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