Imagine this. You are driving down a desolate stretch of North Dakota highway when you notice two dogs running down the side of the highway towards you. You pass them. When you look in your rear view mirror, you see that they have turned around and are running in your direction.

What do you do?

If you are a rescuer or an animal lover, your knee jerk reaction is to pull over and help them. And this is exactly what one of our members did. She stopped. There were no houses in sight and no cars on the road. The dogs were thin, matted, filthy and covered with sores and ticks. She and her friend put the dogs in the back of her car.

They stopped at the nearest farm house and, through a phone call, the dogs’ story came out. Buster and Patches belonged to Jerry.

To him, they were the world. He took them everywhere he went; his companions; his closest friends. But Jerry passed away the week before. His funeral service was that day, an hour from the time they were found.

Jerry’s family did not want Buster and Patches. They planned to destroy them. They had locked the dogs in the barn, but they escaped.

When they were found running down the highway that Thursday morning, they were already 25 miles away from home and still running. It’s as if they knew what fate awaited them if they stayed.

So with everyone’s okay, Buster and Patches went home with Robin to lower Saskatchewan.

It’s been three weeks now. Though they still show signs that they miss Jerry and their old life, they are adjusting. They have been groomed and de-ticked, and their sores are mostly healed. They are vaccinated and fixed.

And now they are searching for a loving family.

Buster (above) is a Brittany mix, about 4 yrs old. Patches (right) is a lab/collie mix, a bit older but not much. Their foster mom says they are well-behaved, good boys. (Click photos to see larger image. Or click here to see more photos.)

Are you the family for them?

Let’s Adopt! conditions for adoption:

1. Family MUST have an existing animal.
2. Animal MUST live inside the home, not on the garden.
3. Animal MUST be fed raw (http://rawlearning.com).

We do not apply an adoption fee. One can’t buy any Let’s Adopt! dog or cat.

Contact: viktor@myletsadopt.com

If you are not the family for Buster and Patches, please SHARE their story with your friends and family… and help us find them their new home.

And please join us on Facebook!

Ciao, Holly

This kind face belongs to a dog we have dubbed Brave Boy. He was spotted in the forest of Istanbul searching for something to eat. He was also injured. When we tried to approach him, he ran away.

After five hours, we found him in an abandoned building. This building was all he knew as “home” and he was likely to die there… except we were looking for him. We were not going to let that happen.

We rescued him and took him to the vet. He is now on the road to his recovery… and a whole new life!

There are many such animals like Brave Boy living homelessly and helplessly on their own. Except for the smart, strong, lucky ones who know how and where to find food, water and shelter, and understand the mentality of the pack, they stand little chance of survival. The average life span for these animals is 2-5 years.

Let’s Adopt! is working to help these cats and dogs by rescuing them, getting them the medical attention they need and finding the right forever homes for them… whether it is in their neighborhood, their country or across the world.

Because the right home is just that… the RIGHT home.

On the 29th of May, three of our rescues will fly from Turkey to the US: Star, Long John, and Lisa. This won’t be cheap. We are going to need as much funds as we can gather. Those who have rescued internationally in the past know how expensive this gets.

This is what we do. I hope you will share our story with your friends and join us.

Ciao, Holly
………………………………………………………
Update: Brave Boy will be going to a new home in Austria!

Hi everyone! Hope your holidays went well.

Most of us are aware of the importance of expanding our Canadian network in order to ensure the progress of the group in our country. Since Let’s Adopt! almost entirely relies on its network of volunteers, we are seeking to reach more and more people like us to join our team to be then able to save even more animals and have an even greater impact.

We are looking for adoptive families for our animals as well as foster homes.

Being a foster home means temporarily welcoming an animal in need and taking care of him until he gets adopted. If you’re interested, contact viktor@myletsadopt.com.

To view dogs and cats for adoption, click here. These animals are located in Turkey and will travel in company of flights volunteers.

Perdita

Let’s Adopt! is neither a shelter or a typical animal rescue. Each ”new” animal is under the responsibility of the rescuer until a permanant home can be found. Potential new families must agree to the following adoption conditions:

- The animal must live inside the home;

- The adoptive family must already have another dog or cat at home;

- The adoptive family must agree to send an update with picture (if possible) after the adoption;

- There can be additional condition(s) depending on individual cases.

Currently, we have no animals available for adoption in Canada, but we will soon.

Contact viktor@myletsadopt.com if you’re willing to help us!

Cath

P.S.: Got talent, girls?

Animals DO NOT Make Good Gifts

This Holiday season you may be tempted to give animals as a gift, please don’t give in. An animal who is given as a gift risks a lifetime of suffering, unloved and unwanted. You may have good intentions, it is unfair to give an animal to anyone unless you are absolutely certain that the person wants that particular animal as a companion and is willing and able to give a lifetime of proper care.

Recently, the LA Times published this article chronicling a demand/trend for shiny new purebred pups referring to as the “Paris Hilton Syndrome.” To date, “A third of the dogs held at San Francisco’s city shelter are all or part Chihuahua. If the trend continues, officials said, the shelter would become 50% Chihuahua within months. While many people will buy into the “Christmas puppy” dream this season, by summer, when the dogs have grown a bit and aren’t as cute and their owners make plans to get away for summer vacation, many may end up at the shelters.

Animal shelters are filled beyond capacity with homeless animals. Many of these are former “pets” who were easily “bought” but somehow did not fit into their lifestyle or they were not prepared for the serious commitment (exercise, housebreak,veterinary/emergency care, spay/neuter, grooming supplies, leashes, harnesses, and bedding). Many people experience little or no guilt when turning an animal over to a shelter or simply abandon them on the road.

If you still want to give an animal as a gift (do not shop, go to your local shelter) please discuss this idea with the prospective recipients, please make sure that they have the time, willingness, ability, and resources to properly care for an animal. Consider offering them a gift certificate from the local animal shelter. Again, Do not shop from the pet stores.

When you shop from pet stores you contribute to the misery of the puppy mills. When I talk to most of my friends, I realized that most of them do not know what the term puppy mill means. A puppy mill is a breeding operation in which dogs are repeatedly bred for financial gain and are kept in substandard conditions. Puppy mill dogs are often confined to small cages for their entire lives and commonly suffer from various infections and parasites. Dogs who live their entire lives in cages and are continually bred for years, without human companionship and with little hope of ever becoming part of a family. These dogs receive little or no veterinary care and never see a bed, a treat or a toy. After their fertility wanes, breeding animals are commonly killed, abandoned or sold to another mill. The annual result of all this breeding is hundreds of thousands of puppies, many with behavior and/or health problems.

Behind the friendly facade of the local pet shop, the pastoral scenes on a “breeder’s” website, or the neighbourhood newspaper ad, there often lies a puppy mill. These canine breeding facilities house dogs in shockingly poor conditions.

You can do your part to help stop Puppy Mills:

• Boycott Pet Stores that sell animals
• Choosing not to buy your next Pet from an Internet site
• Spay and Neuter your Pets
• Adopt a Pet from a local shelter
• Donate money, food etc. to your local shelter
• Sponsor a special needs dog in a rescue program
• Write a letter or email, make a phone call to your state Rep.
• Tell ALL your friends and family to do the same

Me and Badem, we wish you and your furry family a very Merry Christmas, and let’s hope 2010 brings an END to Puppy Mills and Animal Abuse.

Happy Holidays

Love,

Pia

And some words from Badem

Dear Santa,

As a rescued/adopted kid I appreciate that you gave me a loving HOME 4 years ago. THANK YOU. I could not be happier. But please tell my human friends not to give pets as gifts this year. Tell them this: Don`t SHOP for your BEST FRIENDS, ADOPT!! Don`t support Puppy Mills!!

Heyy I have been a really good girl this year. Don`t you think? I only chased the squirrels (just wanted to play with them). I write this year for the friends I had to leave at the shelter, on the streets and who suffer at the puppy mills.

Can you please bring them loving new homes this year? They will be as good as I have been this year. They promises. Read more »

In another blog article, I’ve cited some of the biggest issues to be tackled by Let’s Adopt! (Canada), and one of them was turning the main Canadian cities to a no-kill policy – which is to me a perfectly attainable goal. I am aware that ”No-Kill” has to be done right, and today, I wanted to write about ”No-Kill” shelters and the animal hoarding myth.

Mos animals were malnourished

Last year, 390 neglected animals have been seized from a North Carolina property. The volunteers of American Humane, an organization protecting children and animals, were chocked to find hundreds of animals living in inappropriate conditions: dogs, cats, horses, birds, sugar gliders, pygmy goats, rabbits and even an injured llama. They lacked access to fresh water, proper food or veterinary treatments.

Dogs had missing hair patches due to mange and piled-up crates were filled with as much as 5 cats in them, others containing mice and other small animals. It’s no wonder that this rescue operation has called ”Noah’s Ark” by the local media.

This sad but true story was yet another case of animal hoarding.

After I posted my article, one of our members responded by saying that while she’s in favour of the ”No-Kill” idea, except that ”there needs to be an understanding of no-kill with compassion.” I agree, the decision of euthanizing a terminaly ill animal is a though but sometimes nessecary one when there is no other options left. A REAL euthanasia is when you put a being out of his misery. Ending the life of a healthy, adoptable animal in order to make space (or not), though, is not euthanasia; it’s killing, destroying. ”Euthanasia” sounds sweeter, but it’s mostly used as an euphemism: in some high-kill shelters and pounds, where animals are being killed by thousands every year, the appropriate word could be extermination.

A good ”No-Kill” shelter is run by caring people. It offers good quality food, access to clear water at all times and veterinary care to all their animals and is likely to…

- work with foster (temporary) families.

- gladly accept help from volunteers.

- work to gain public visibility for all of their animals, including those in foster care, for example: by running a website.

- euthanize an animal if it is found in a deplorable, painful and irreversible condition… because then only, it becomes the appropriate thing to do.

Neglected dog

Hoarders are people considered to have a compelling psychological disorder. According to author Nathan J. Winograd, ”true hoarders thrive in high kill shelter communities because they can rationalize their friends and families the accumulation of too many animals. They have no choice but to keep these animals, they say, because their local shelter will only kill them.”

”No-Kill” shelters and animal rescue organizations are working hard to save animals who can otherwise end up being killed in a ”traditional” shelter or pound. They’re blamed of being ”limited-admission” shelters, they’re a ”shame” for turning down animals when they’ve reached their capacity, BUT at the same time, they’re called ”warehouses”, ”hoarding facilities”. Sounds contradictory, doesn’t it?

Sincerely,

Cath

Make Them Part of Your Family

Look deep into the eyes of any animal, and then for a moment, trade places, their life becomes as precious as yours and you become as vulnerable as them. Now smile if you believe all animals deserve our respect and our protection, for in a way, they are us, and we are them.” ~Philip Ochoa~

I was going to write about puppy mills until I saw my friend Viktor`s post today. It was about Bertha, one of our adopted dogs which we thought she was going to live happily ever after in her fury home!!! Bertha is a pure breed Rottweiler which was found in the streets of Istanbul. She was so tired, so emaciated, so destroyed by lack of care that she collapsed in the arms of her rescuer. Then she was taken care of by one of Istanbul best vets and in months as members of the Let`s Adopt Family we all watched her amazing transformation. She looked like a completely different dog, she gained weight, looking healthy, with a big smile on her face, ready to fly to her new loving home…

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=39124&id=1314867706&ref=mf

On the 30^th of November Bertha was adopted by a “perfect” family. We saw the pictures of our baby girl running in the woods with that precious smile on her face. We were all so happy for her. Unfortunately our little fairy tale lasted only ten days. When Viktor went to the adoptant`s home to see how she`s been doing, she found Bertha in the crate. She was going crazy, wanted to get out. She has lost 2 kilos in ten days. They fought so hard to make her gain weight and recover her health but she has lost two kilos whilst on her guardian`s watch. He took Bertha from the adoptant and now we are looking for another “perfect” family to take care of our baby girl.

http://blog.myletsadopt.com/2009/12/10/lara-sayinsoya-mektup-letter-to-lara-sayinsoy/

Then I started thinking…Why do people chain their dogs? Why do people leave their dogs in a crate for hours when they go for work? What`s your definition of animal cruelty?

According to the Humane Society of United States there are variety of reasons why people chain their dogs outside. Many people believe that dogs should live outside, and they keep the dog tied up because he or she escapes the yard or digs in the garden. Or maybe the dog has grown too large to be inside, or has developed a behavior problem that the owner is unable to deal with, so the dog stays in the yard. Or perhaps the dog is kept outside to protect the home.

Dogs are social animals. They choose to live in “packs” and rarely spend time alone. When dogs are chained, tethered, or tied-out they are essentially isolated from their “pack” (your family). A dog kept chained alone in one spot for hours, days, months, or even years suffers immense psychological damage. An otherwise friendly and docile dog, when kept continuously chained, becomes neurotic, unhappy, anxious, and often aggressive. Chained dogs are likely to hurt themselves. Dogs can get caught up in their chains and injure themselves and possibly even hang or strangle themselves. And sad but true chained dogs are euthanized more frequently. Chained dogs can free themselves from bondage and get loose and when they do they are often caught and put to sleep due to erratic behavior and aggressive tendencies.

Chaining a dog is passive animal cruelty. By leaving a dog tied to a tree you are leaving him vulnerable to heat, cold and attacks from other humans or animals. I wonder why a person chooses to have a dog when the dog lives his life isolated on the end of a chain. I often hear that people want a “watchdog” so they can chain their dog outside. Contrary to popular belief a chained dog does not make a good guard dog. They may be territorial over the yard; however, most of the items thieves target are indoors where your dog can not reach the burglar.

If you see a dog that is constantly left chained up outside and you think his quality of life is suffering, don’t be afraid to call the Humane Society. They will send someone out to educate the owners or take the dog away and give it a better home where it will (deservedly) be loved as a family member. And please make your dogs part of your family. Spend quality time with them, play with them, take them for nice long walks. Be a BEST FRIEND…

Love,

Pia

http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/chaining_tethering/tips/do_you_chain_your_dog.html

http://www.unchainyourdog.org/FactsPhotos.htm