Update: Exports, Adoptions, and Closing the Shelter

We are strapped for cash to get the 5 animals out of our shelter ad into the US and we have exactly 2 days to raise this money. Without another $3000 in funds for the flight and all ground transport, we are not going to be able to get these guys to their homes!

I bought this flight with the intention that we finally could get these 3 adopted animals to their homes, and then I managed to book 2 more animals with the hope that there would be some interest in their adoptions which have not yet had.

We have had a lot of emotional responses regarding the closure of the shelter recently, something we must do in order to actually do the REAL work of saving animals lives.  We have no money, people, or vets to run a rescue and after 7 years of trying to pull this off with some measure of sustainability, pardon me for not wanting to keep pissing up a rope while still being unable to make a dent in the issues we face. An internationally managed vet clinic is nonnegotiable when rescuing animals in a region totally absent of the most basic level of medical competence from local vets, particularly related to our farm sanctuary residents.  If anything happens to either our pigs or chickens, I personally must euthanize them myself by an overdose of surgical sedation and then injecting air into their heart to form a cardiac embolism that kills them.  If that does not make you feel sick to think of having to do that to your own animals, then you are missing something.  We need vets to help and we have none. Do not cry over the closing shelter, but please do become enraged over the absence of investment in true solutions to animal suffering. This is the real tragedy here and around the world.

With extremely limited funds and human resources, I have chosen to do everything in my power to ensure that every single penny is going into solving problems that no shelter will ever be able to address. I get tired of watching preventable suffering, believe it or not, and after all this time, have seen nothing but days upon days of it while knowing full well what would END the issues we face in overpopulation of animals who face a short and miserable life of neglect, cruelty, lack of vet care, and being stolen or sold for becoming someone’s meal (this is true of ALL species, not just dogs and cats). 

If you really care about the work we do, you’d applaud the decision to shift all resources to solutions, not just media friendly Bandaids on bone cancer that the large organizations and hoarding shelters are selling you.  Year-round mass sterilization and providing veterinary care for animals that here have nowhere else to go for a real diagnosis and proper treatment are solutions. I can either spend my life saving millions of animals or dozens, and I have chosen the millions.  Please be aware that this is the ONLY solution and I have no regrets about this at all.  We’d appreciate support for this decision that is based on many years of experience living on pennies, begging daily for funding that is not forthcoming, and being in a constant state of recruitment and training that gets us nowhere. A clinic is the only way we can care for the animals we have and save lives outside our gates.  Please consider that before commenting on how awful it is to close the shelter.  In my shoes, you’d do the same I would hope.

Right now, these animals need to go to new homes.  The 25 cats in our care are almost all very easily adoptable to safe, indoor, lifelong homes with access to proper veterinary nearby, something we cannot do in Hoi An without a clinic.  They must go and we must focus on solutions. The pigs and chickens are unable to leave the property at all, however, due to the presence of Avian Flu and African Swine Fever, so we must get our clinic ASAP for them as well.  Please help us to that end.