Dogs of Dubrovnik – we are winning, but really need your help!

I have spent my life fighting for animals and I have learned to my sorrow that victories are hard to come by. Every time you think you have won another battle looms. Dubrovnik in Croatia is a good example; we faced down the city mayor who wanted to kill more than 300 street dogs and won. He lost his job.

Mato Francovic, the new mayor, is a good man who has pledged to create a state-of-the-art dog shelter so the city’s street dogs will no longer face death. As one of his first acts as mayor, Mato sent dog food to the private Zarcovica animal shelter so the dogs would not go hungry.  You and I, as dog lovers, can only salute him.

But Mato is a mayor, not a magician and a new shelter will take time to create. The problem is bureaucracy. He has to find a piece of land, get planning permission, find funding and then build the shelter.

In the meantime, 360 dogs cower on a mountain outside the city, protected by a few brave women at the private Zarcovica Animal Shelter. Zarcovica has no running water, no electricity and only rudimentary shelter. To make the situation even worse, Sandra Sambrailo, who has run Zarcovica for 14 years fighting a lonely battle for the dogs, is tired.  Sandra, ‘the saint of the mountain’, told me: “I am not so strong anymore, I don’t know how much longer I can go on.”

Until a new shelter is built, the dogs of Zarcovica need our help, and I have promised to give it. Right now, the dogs need shade cloth to protect them from the baking summer heat, workers to care for them, veterinary treatment and medicines. With your help, I will provide all of that.

We are so close to achieving a major victory for dogs in distress in Dubrovnik, please stand with me in this final battle. The new mayor is trying to create a new shelter by Christmas. Give generously so that dogs in distress in Dubrovnik will have the finest Christmas present they could ever have, freedom from the threat of death.

For the animals,

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