We know we have been a very depressing page for the past week, and we are so sorry for that....Sometimes bad news just seems to come all at once. Although this has been an especially hard week, this is always a hard time for us because of the length of the UK then Serbian Christmas holidays (limiting what we can get done), the weather, and the significant drop in donations that we (and all charities) experience in December and January. Even with all that in mind, this has been one of our toughest weeks. Sadly, bad news always comes in threes, and we have more bad news. Yesterday, Jelena arrived at the shelter in Nis and discovered one of our long term residents and sponsor dogs, Cuki, had died :-( Cuki was old, and his agression meant it hadnt been possible to vet check him in a few years. He appeared healthy - he was eating and drinking and barking as normal - but we cant be sure he didnt have an unseen condition. However, we had a horrific drop in temperature the night he died to -15. The temperature at night in Nis has been below freezing for a week an the night before that was -19. Even the healthiest dogs are feeling the cold... We at SFP HQ talk endlessly about what we can do to keep our dogs warm, but we have major limitations. There are over 380 dogs at the shelter, there are 3 taps and no electricity. All enclosures have polystyrene insulated kennels. We put coats on the dogs that we can when it snows, but as soon as its wet the coats are more of a danger than a help. We cannot use blankets as we cant wash them and once they are wet they are also worse than no blanket. We use straw for the most vulnerable (older dogs/puppies) but we dont have enough workers to change the straw over for all the dogs and even if we did, we cant even get hold of enough straw. We considered wood pellets/chip inside kennels, but the kennels are fixed opening kennels, so they dirty wood cant be removed properly, meaning the dogs sleep in wet dirt. Paper turns to mush in the wet... Its exhausting. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE believe us when we say we are constantly experimenting with new ideas and reaching out to experts to try and give us options. We leave no stone unturned. They ONLY real solution available at this time is to try and make the dogs a bit fatter and stronger. So, we need MEAT. We would like to try and give all the dogs an extra, high protein, meal a day on any days when the temperature will go below freezing. 380+ dogs each eating roughly 500gms of meat is 150 kgs. We can buy pet shop meat for €1.07 (there are 50kgs available now) and human grade for €3.03 per kg. So one meal for all the dogs will be minimally €203. We would like to try and raise enough for 10 days of meals, which is roughly €2000 (approx £1550). Please donate via Paypal to serbiasforgottenpaws@yahoo marking the donation MEAT. Bank transfer to TSB, Account Name: Serbias Forgotten Paws, Account Number: 77422368, Sort Code: 77-30-02. As always, thank you. We hope we will have a bit of good news soon.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 19:39:21 +0000
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