terça-feira, 14 de janeiro de 2014

The story of the spay and neuter campaign of January 2014 in Portugal

Everything started with an idea. In Barcelona, during the annual Dogs Trust Conference in 2013, my dear Norwegian friend Siri Ydstie suggested to make an s/n campaign in Portugal in January, supported by ASNI (Animal Spay Neuter International) and done by the Romanian dream team leaded by Dr. Aurelian Stefan. The preparations started there at ones, beginning with talking to a great lady named Nancy Janes, president of ASNI who talked to Aurelian if it’s possible. Everybody agreed, and so, the planning continued. With between our organization Cantinho dos Animais de Beja and another organization situated in Ourique called Rafeiritos do Alentejo we agreed to fix the date for the second weekend of January. Then, the efforts had to be divided into organizing everything locally and get the financial support for the whole campaign, this things cost money! Luckily, as it was an ASNI project, the flights for the vets were pay by them; they had to fly in from Romania. Siri started a facebook action called 4 Stray Dogs where she and her friend Christina Skorge asked for donations. Here, we asked our Swedish friends from Hundrondellen and German friends from Pfötchenhilfe for help too. So, with great effort of everybody mentioned, the money could be gathered. Locally we had to organized hotel and places for the sterilizations, transports and contact people to get their animals fixed at the campaign, and also talk to people who feed street cats for them to catch those cats and bring them in. Only one week before the beginning of the campaign we had our doubts if we could really do it, the weather could not be fine, and not so much animals could come in or other things could get wrong. But, thankfully nothing of this happened. Day one was done in a what we call Marianas Shelter, situated near Ourique, 60km from my town Beja. This kennel was (and still is) originally her house but she, as a great animal lover, soon had to transform her garden into a kennel where actually are about 70 animals. Many of them were fixed there, and about 25 animals came in from other places, in total, 61. Not bad for the first day! Saturday, Sunday and a bit of Monday morning was big time in Beja. In this kind of campaigns we can always count with the help of a local vet who usually let us work in his clinic, which is a great help for us. There, it was a very, very busy going, animas coming in and out, was just too good to be true. Never seen anything before, the team leaded by Dr. A included his brother and two assistance were working almost without stopping, Siri was there too and was a very great help also. In total, the number of fixed animals in 4 days is spectacular: 247! Nobody even in their wildest dreams could imagine such a large number! It was the biggest campaign ever done in our region, with this, many unwanted babies are avoided, the animals won’t suffer anymore one this. Now, as "the smoke is going down", we all are still tired but happy, and certain that we did a good job. Of course, they were things that didn’t go well ... we are humans, born to make mistakes, but we did our best, and that is what counts at the end. In my personal name and in the name of Cantinho dos Animais de Beja and Rafeiritos do Alentejo, we want to thank: Siri Ydstie, Christina Skorge, ASNI in the person of Nancy Janes, Dr. Aurelian Stefan and his dream team, Hundrondellen, Pfötchenhilfe, all sponsors on facebook, our local vet in Beja and everybody who helped in this great, great campaign. Hope not forgot anybody. Until next time :)