These are my first articles for Euro Weekly News. They feature Carla the little dog, whose story I also tell in today’s podcast on almerimarlife.com.
22/04: Almerimar Strays has been in operation now for nearly 2 years, and a lot of you will already have heard about our work, or even been to one of our now twice monthly book sales. Mostly to date we have been focused on rescuing and sterilising cats, but for a change I have a lovely dog story.
The photo is of little (now named) Carla and her 4 tiny puppies. She is the small dog that people will have in recent months come across as the friend of the homeless man Oscar here in Almerimar, although we know that she was not originally his dog. My friend actually remembers her from when she used to feed her 2 years ago in Calle Alcor, so this little dog has been fending for herself out on the streets for a long time.
A lot of people have been worried about her, particularly in the last few weeks, as after Oscar disappeared, (we hope having been picked up by the Red Cross), she was all alone again, apart from kind people giving her some food.
We tried to take her to the dog rescue about a month ago but she fought so hard not to get into my jeep, even trying to bite me, that we decided to leave her where she was for the time being, not realising just how pregnant she was. Then at the end of March I got a phone call one horrid, windy evening to say that this poor little dog had given birth to 4 tiny puppies outside an estate agents.
This time we had to rescue her and equipped with a net and thick gloves, I managed to get her to follow her tiny kids into the large dog box I had lifted them into. After a night in a friend’s basement, we took them to Karin at the dog protectora, when the search began for a more suitable foster home either in Spain or Germany.
Fortunately, one of the lovely girls in Germany who finds homes for our cats, has a friend who helps dogs, and she agreed to take them. On March 10th Carla and 10-day old puppies travelled to Germany to their new foster home, where all are safe and well. We do however urgently need to send more money for vet bills as Cornelia in Germany effectively has 5 news dogs, so if anybody cares about this little family and would like to donate money to help Carla and her puppies, please contact me via this blog.
Carla & Her Puppies
29/04: Firstly as a follow-up to last week’s article I would like to say that Carla and her 4 babies are healthy and well in their foster home in Germany. If you missed my first article, Carla is the little dog from Almerimar that we rescued at the end of March just after she had given birth to 4 tiny puppies. The latest news is that whilst Carla herself is still a little nervous of people, she is letting foster mum Cornelia stroke her puppies, and on April 17th, all their little eyes opened! Enjoy the latest photo and look out on alstrays.com for further updates.
Meanwhile, I continue to get requests to help more cats, some as a direct result of recent articles I have written, and also through my blog. This is all great, and of course we will try and help as many people with stray animals as we can, and also people who need to re-home their own cats before returning to the UK. We do however always need more people to help us.
I am always asking for people to come forward who may be able to foster cats for us for 4-6 weeks, and now we also desperately need to hear from anyone who is planning to fly to Germany over the next few months, and might be willing to take a cat on board with them.
My contacts in Germany who have found Carla her foster home, find fantastic permanent homes for our stray and abandoned cats and kittens and could actually take more cats from me than I am currently able to send. My challenge is getting them ready to travel, and then finding transport to get them to Germany. I now have about 20 cats on my immediate list that could be re-homed easily, so please contact us if you can help make this happen in a any way.