Dear Finnish Friends,

I wish to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support, without which we could have never realized almost 40% of the new shelter now.

More then 200 dogs stay in good conditions, have big kennels, new cages, have courtyard where they play during day time and also the old/sick dogs and puppies can stay in warm rooms and we have also a small veterinary area. All this wonders where possible only because you belived in our work and you wanted to improve the faith of animals in Tg-Jiu.

Unfortunately, I am very worried about the old shelter from where we must move dogs as soon as possible because the owners of the land threaten us and the city hall as well on and on. Everyday they go to the mayor and make pressure to demolish the shelter urgently, saying that they dont care that we don't have where to move dogs.

Also, I want to say that it is extremely hard to administrate all alone the two shelters, where work never ends, and in addition to this I must handle lot of other problems like: people's complaints regarding animals, relation with press, with authorities,public shelter etc.

As you may know, everyday I supervise the public shelter where I try to solve problems. Those of you who visited Tg-Jiu saw the precarious conditions from
public shelter, so I bring them daily food, medicine and adopt dogs with health problems that would surely die there. For example, two days ago I have adopted two dogs from city hall that where in a very bad shape.

I wish inhabitants of Tg-Jiu involve in solving animals' problems but this don't happen easily, unfortunately. Here aren't any volunteers, any donors, people care only about themselves and wait on and on help from the association, from us, thinking that we are obliged to solve everything. Managing two shelters, but also solving the many problems that appear daily is very difficult because our financial resources are very limited and also because we don't have people who help . For example, in winter time costs raise up, as we need more food for dogs, wood for warming up the room in old shelter, straws to be put in the cages of dogs etc.

As for me, I have been doing my best in order to improve the welfare of animals in my town and not only, I have been sacrificing everything for this activity, I
work up to 18 hours/day and I can say I am happy when I see progresses. But if you would not believed in me and my work I could not hve done all this during
these years.

Also, recently some officials of Tg-Jiu sent their gratitude to us and told me that we do this activity with professionalism and we are the only association in Romania that is formed by specialists (I am a fully qualified zootechnical engineer and now I have the first doctoral degree of animal protection in Romania and Patricia is a student in veterinary medicine). And despite differences of opinions we might have sometimes with officials, they appreciate us as we are consistent in our work and prooved all those years that we do our best for animals. This appreciations give me more power, as it is like a recognition of our work and I do trust that in the future we will have a much better cooperation with city hall.

Dear friends, I would like to thank you once more for your help and support in last years and please dont forget that without your help our dream - of building a new shelter for the dogs in our care - wouldn't have been possible as well as being able to provide food and care to hundreds of dogs.

I wish you a Merry Christmas and may all your dreams come true!

Kindly yours,
Carmena

Pro Animals Romania