Christmas party in To Steki Kalivia

Our Christmas party for the animals of Thassos in Susi's and Giannis' tavern in Kalivia was a great success. Including the raffle we made a profit of 400 euro!!! We never expected that and are very happy with the result. A truly Christmas present for the animals.

We want to thank supermarket Saltaris and Cava Saltaris in Limenaria, DIY Rigas in Potos, Shell station Patiras in Kalivia, Taverna To Steki in Kalivia, Pharmacy Ganitou in Limenaria and Bakery Oganezov in Kalivia for donating prizes for the raffle.
As you can see on the pictures, it was a wonderful night with 29 visitors who have enjoyed the food, music and each other's company.
All this would not have been possible without the volunteers who prepared the delicious food and helped on the night itself.
But above all we want to thank Susi and Giannis who let us use their tavern for free.
It certainly inspired us to have more parties and we hope to welcome even more people then.

We wish you all a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Christmas party

Greek Christmas is celebrated like Christmas in the rest of Europe. But here the presents are given on the 1st of January. Saint Vassilis used to bring the presents to the children, but nowadays they are also found under the Christmas tree.

Apart from the other presents that we received for the animals of Thassos, we would like to add one more gift, and that is why we would like to invite you to our Christmas party at Friday 20th December in Kalivia, Thassos.
The party will be held in tavern To Steki (Susies) from 19:30. There will be good music, homemade finger food, beer, wine, retsina, softdrinks and a raffle with nice prizes.
The entrance fee is € 15 (all food and drink is included in this price) and the profits will of course all go to the animals of Thassos.

In short:
Taverna To Steki (Susi), Kalivia
20th December 2013 from 19:30
€ 15 entrance fee

Taverna To Steki you will find, coming from Limenaria turning left into Kalivia, about 20 m on the left.

We are looking forward to welcome you on this night and thank you in advance on behalf of the animals.

Newsletter No 1

We are very proud to present you the first newsletter of ACT. Here you can read what has happened in the past year. Unfortunately we have not been able to record, that the registration of the charity is a fact. But the papers are in court and with a little luck it will be completed this year. Of course we will inform you about that on our website and Facebook page.

Please click here to see the newsletter.

If you wish to receive our newsletter automatically by email, please contact us.

Christmas Bazaar in Limenas

November has been a very busy month for the volunteers of ACT. Apart from the 'normal' care of the dogs and nine new puppies, vaccinations etc. and keeping up with Facebook, we are working on our first newsletter, preparing everything for the Christmas Bazaar and organizing a Christmas party (more about this soon!). So we hope you can understand why it was a bit quiet on our website lately.

On 7th and 8th December ACT will be present at the yearly Christmas Bazaar in Limenas, Kalogeriko. On Saturday from 11:00 till 20:00 and on Sunday from 12:00 till 19:00. At the moment many hands are working hard to make beautiful things to sell. Even friends in Austria collected nice things for us!

So if you are on Thassos come and visit the Bazaar. You will surely find beautiful products. And who knows… maybe you will find nice presents for your beloved ones.

We wish you a stress free and beautiful Christmas time.

Car boot sale and puppies

Thanks to the lovely weather there were lots of visitors to the car boot sale last Saturday in Limenas. Not only did we sell lots of goodies - for a profit of 258.65 euro - but it also gave us an opportunity to chat to people about the work that ACT does. It was very encouraging that several people offered to help us.
And help is just what we need. It isn't easy for just a handful of volunteers to do everything.

As a "bonus" we got two puppies that had been living on the streets. They were spotted by some Austrian tourists earlier that week and despite enquiries in the neighbourhood nobody knew where the puppies came from. It appears that they had been dumped. The Austrians had been feeding them, and had arranged with us to hand the babies over to us at the car boot sale. We had a long talk together and they are happy to support ACT, both now and in the future. On top of that they gave a generous donation towards the cost of vaccinations, microchipping etc, for the little ones, whom they named Mimi and Max.
Thank you both so very much, Bernard and Susanne. It is wonderful to meet people like you who really care about animals and actually offer practical help!

Looking for foster families in North Rhine-Westphalia or Dutch border

We are urgently looking for new foster families in the area of Cologne/Düsseldorf who are willing to foster our dogs, brought to Germany by flight partners, until they have found a new home. Our preference is a family or couple with dog experience that sees no problem in fostering different types, ages and characters of dogs. The dogs have to be picked up from Airport Cologne or Düsseldorf. Obviously the family has to have sufficient space.
Mr. Klaus Franke and his family, who has been fostering the dogs of Thassos for many years, will be happy to assist some time with his rich experience. Unfortunately he cannot take all the animals for us and we would like to relieve him somewhat.

Please contact us if you, like us, care about the dogs of Thassos and know someone who would like to help as a foster family, or if you might want to do so yourself.
We are always willing to answer your questions about, for example veterinary costs, which of course are paid by ACT as long as the dog is in a foster home. You'll never be on your own, but work closely with us and Mr. Klaus Franke. We are looking forward to you :-)

We try of course to find the dogs a new home on Thassos or save them an intermediate care again, but unfortunately that is a rarity and it is therefore all the more important to have more loving and experienced foster families.

This dog is what you call a lucky girl!

She roamed the streets around the market in Prinos, when English tourists saw her and had a 2nd look because her coat was so special. As it turned out, the poor thing was totally matted and could hardly walk. She wore a collar, so they asked around who the owner was. When that was not to find out, they decided to take her home and contacted ACT. Since we had no place to foster the dog at that moment, the English took her for a while and started to cut off the lumps of matted hair. It was a bag full of more than a kilo! After a wash she looked a lot better and Layla, as she was called, turned out to be a nice, sweet and even house trained dog.
Not much later there was a possibility on a flight to Amsterdam and today she is leaving already to her foster family in the Netherlands.
Layla is estimated to be 3-4 years old, has not been spayed yet and is looking for a loving family.

Zina and puppies

In July we were contacted by a retired shoemaker here on Thassos. He had a mother dog (called Zina) and one of her puppies, both of which he wanted to keep. He had already sent her 3 other puppies to a lady in Kalivia in the hopes that she could care for them and find them new homes. However, it didn't work out quite like that.

In the end, the shoemaker could not cope with Zina and her baby, and the lady in Kalivia had financial problems in looking after so many unwanted dogs. So, ACT stepped in and we now have available for adoption Zina (whom the shoemaker had sterilised!), her four puppies, and another puppy from the lady in Kalivia.

Zina and 1 of her puppies are the first guests in the new kennel, 3 other puppies are being fostered in Theologos and one in Kalivia.

Zina is about 18 months old, quite a big girl, and can be rather nervous until she gets to know you. Then she is gentle and co-operative. With love and patience she will become a marvelous family dog.

The puppies are about 4 months old and are happy, uncomplicated little souls. Their hobbies are eating, sleeping and playing! They are already learning their names, and the magic word "Come"!

Zina

Kelly

Kyra

Kiwi

Katie

Kalivia

The enclosure is finished

We want to say a big Thank You to Alex and Grant who have worked a couple of days to build a beautiful kennel for the enclosure.

Thanks to a generous donation of Wereldasielen (World shelters) in The Netherlands towards the building costs, we have been able to do so. Now we could make a proper all weather dog house that will last for years. It has two compartments with its own entrance and the sides can be taken off for easy access to a sick dog or cleaning.

We are very happy with the result and so are the dogs that are already living there -  but… that is another story that will follow soon ;-)

Speedy

It is always good to hear how the animals get on in their new homes, but actually to see it with your own eyes is absolutely marvelous!

Speedy was found as a puppy by tourists in Limenaria. Before he found a new owner in Germany, he spent a year with a foster family on Thassos. Now, he's back, but this time as a tourist! He has come to Thassos with his new family, on holiday.
Naturally he visited his old dog buddies and it was a lovely reunion; it was as though he had never been away. However, his attention was always focussed on his new owners and it is clear that he loves them very much, which is as it should be, of course.

On the return trip Speedy will have company, as his owner has kindly offered to escort one of our dogs.  Not only that, she will also pay for the ticket! For Jasper, this is the chance of a lifetime - to go to Klaus and hopefully find his new forever home.

As if all that weren't enough, Speedy's owner brought us ten T shirts with our ACT logo on them, which she had printed in her own copy service shop in Monchengladbach!

We can't thank you enough, Antje and we wish you many, many happy years together with Speedy!

Building the enclosure

Tuesday July 23rd was the Big Day! That was when we constructed the dog enclosure. There were 6 volunteers. Given the high temperatures, we started work at 7 in the morning. Ouch!
As expected, it took quite some time to measure the placement of the holes for the posts, but once those had been drilled everything went ahead really quickly.
It was very hard work on one of the hottest days of the year, but 7 hours and 10 bottles of water later (who would have thought that water could taste so good!) we had a lovely shady and spacious enclosure. Now all that needs to be done is to put gates on. That should be finished within the next day or so, and then half of the new run will be ready for our first canine guest! The other half will be operational once we have built another kennel in it.
So, it was with a great sense of achievement that the volunteers sat back at the end of a long and tiring day, and quenched parched throats with well deserved cold drinks.

The average age of the volunteers who helped out on this occasion is 60+.  It would be nice if some of younger volunteers could lend a hand as well. Every offer of help is always appreciated.

Building materials

Last week we've been very busy with drawing plans for the enclosure for the dogs and figuring out what materials we need to buy.
The final plan was there and Wednesday we went to Rigas in Potos to buy it. Of course we knew that it would cost quite some money, but nevertheless we were shocked when everything was added up! We were very pleased that Giorgos gave us a generous discount, but still we had to pay 500 euro.

Building a good place for the dogs is very important to us, but this leaves us with hardly any money left and on top of that we have one dog to be spayed next week and 2 dogs on transport this month to pay for.
So we would be very very grateful if you could help us. Any donation, big or small, is now very important for the dogs.
If you don't have a Paypal account you can still use the button and pay with your credit card.
Thank you very much in advance!

A better place for the dogs

For quite a while now we have been using a plot of land where we can put a few dogs temporarily, while they wait to be rehomed. Having that facility has been a huge help, of course, but the problem is that we cannot built any shelters there and the fencing is not secure. Result - the dogs have to be chained. We try to make their living conditions as good as we can. They are on long chains, and we visit and walk them on a regular basis.
However, that situation is certainly not ideal and we have been looking for a solution. Finally, we got lucky!  Jannis Rigatis (who owns Dionysos restaurant in Limenaria) has kindly offered us the use of some of his land where we can build a large kennel, so that the dogs can walk about and have plenty of space. We are so grateful to him for that. It will make the dogs' lives so much better.
First, we have to buy the materials and do the building work! We'll keep you informed about our progress.
Just keep watching this space...

2 lucky girls

Sometimes things happen so fast that there is no time to put it on the News page!

Stray dog Ruby who has been taken care for since last winter finally found a flight escort and went to Germany. Within 2 days Klaus has found her a loving family. But what else did we expect? As we said: who can say NO to her pretty face?!?

We wish this gentle girl all the luck in the world.

Mid June a little female dog was found abandoned on the road in Theologos. All day in the burning sun she was waiting there for her family to pick her up again. Some Greek people felt sorry for her and gave her water and food. After 3 days one of our volunteers took her in. Apparently she was dumped, nobody has come to pick her up… Because India (that is what we called her) is so tiny she can go as hand luggage in the cabin. She is a lucky girl, because next Saturday she already has a flight to Germany.

Puppy update

Do you remember Flora and Frida? They went to Klaus in Germany on the 11th of May and both found a loving family in a few days! Flora is now living with 3 children as new friends and Frida has 6 cats to play with. You can tell by the pictures that they enjoy their new life.

Flora

Frida

Also the 4 brothers Giant, Gus, Gizmo and Goldie all found new homes. Until now we only have a picture of Gus (now called Ted) who conquered the cat's chair. But of course you can check Klaus' website to read about the others anytime.

Two of the five puppies that were found in May unfortunately died after 2 days. The other 3 however are doing very well and are 6 weeks old now. The 2 beige ones are girls, named Holly and Hilda. The boy, Henry, looks different and is black and white.
They are all happy, exploring little dogs, playing with the cats of the foster family and it won't take long before they will play with their dogs as well. That is still a bit scary though because they are so big! ;-)

Holly plays with cat

Hilda and Henry

The three musketeers

Facebook

Did you know that on our Facebook page you can find more news flashes, stories of flight partners or new dog owners and pictures? And you don't have to be registered on Facebook to see it, just click on the FB-button at the side menu of this page or follow this link.

3 lucky puppies

We really like to thank Melanie and FOS for giving us the opportunity to send 2 extra puppies to Germany!

Gus, who travelled with another flight partner, was picked up at the airport by his new family and Gizmo and Goldie were brought to a temporary foster home until Klaus comes back from his holiday.

We are very happy that these little fellows have got the chance to find a new family soon.

Gus (now Ted) at his arrival in Cologne.

Gizmo and Goldie at their foster home.

Donations

We are very happy that more and more people know about ACT. This results in more and more support and donations. It is impossible to mention every single form of help we get on this website, but we will surely try to do so on our Facebookpage.

Just a few examples to give you an idea:

we received a big transport box from a lady in The Netherlands and a Dutch man was so kind to bring it over to the island;

we received some collars and leads from The Netherlands and Germany;

we received a couple of dog beds from a man living on Thassos who didn't need them anymore.

Thank you all very very much!

 

We talked to our vet and he can do the sterilizations cheaper for us if we provide him operation materials. So if you have connections in the medical world, may be you can help us?

What we need is: sterile operating gloves nr. 8, stitches 3/0 pga or vicryl, sterile gauzes, betadine scrub.

Thanks!

5 dumped puppies

Today 5 tiny little puppies were found by 2 girls in Kalivia. They were left next to a garbage bin in a box with a blanket. At least they were not thrown away in a plastic bag, but still… May be it was somebody who couldn't keep them but at the same time felt sorry for them?

Let's hope they were found in time and make it through the night, because they did not seem very happy when they were brought to us.

We don't have any foster families available at the moment, so they are staying at someone who already takes care of 5 other dogs. What else could we do, say no?

So dear people living on Thassos, if you can please help us with fostering! Thanks!

More new dogs

A small dog was walking around in Limenas in December. A nice lady and her family felt sorry for her and took care of the dog by feeding her. In January they found out that she was pregnant and on 13 January she gave birth to 3 puppies. It was winter and quite cold, so the family cut half of the bush where she hid her babies and put them and the mother in their storage place.
After 3 months the puppies were bigger and of course ate more and the family had to conclude that it was becoming too expensive and too much work. They called ACT to ask if we could help. Luckily we had room so we went to Limenas to pick the mother and puppies up. But after 2 days the phone rang again: they had fallen so in love with the black boy (we called him Freddy), that they asked if they could please have him back.
And so we said ‘of course‘ being sure that the little fellow would have a good home there.
Meanwhile all four were vaccinated and the mother dog will be sterilized soon.
The little sisters Frida (brown) and Flora (white) will go to Klaus in Germany on the 11th of May, where surely they will find a forever home soon.

In the same week a boy from Kalivia found 4 very little hunting mix puppies in the village at the side of the road. They were all male, so we assume that they were dumped because some hunters think that females are better hunting dogs. They were only 8 weeks old and would have been run over by a car if they weren't found.
They were extra lucky, because we still had one foster family available.
They are happy little chaps and now waiting for a new home. We named them Giant, Gus, Gizmo and Goldie.

Car Boot Sale – Saturday 20 April in Limenas

As every year, there will also be a car boot sale in 2013 at the parking near the ferry port of Limenas.

ACT will also be present with a stand with all kinds of nice things for sale.

As it now appears the weather will be nice. We look forward to your visit.

Asking for help really helps

Since we have not enough foster families on the island (yet - hopefully that will change soon), we were asking around if we could use somebody's land where a few dogs could stay until we found them a foster home, on the island or abroad.

And so we asked Kosta "Kastro" (yes the one who has the tavern in Kastro) who immediately offered a part of his stable near Kalivia.

With some volunteers we cleaned the place and made it escape-proof. Now it is a nice and airy space, big enough for a few dogs. Just in time, because we got a phone call from Limenas about a stray mother dog with 3 puppies.

 

    

Must be a good place when the dog comes in on his own ;)

 

Thank you very very much Kosta!!

Also we thank Hannelore who lives nearby during the summer. She offered to take care of the dogs, feed them and take them for a walk.

Help like this is really important for us. We just can't do it alone. So if you think you can help in any way, please contact us. Your help will be very welcome, even more to the animals.

5 puppies have moved to another place

Our Christy really didn't have an easy start. Her first family had to conclude that taking care of three young children and a puppy is a bit too much. But Christy is a brave dog and had no problems with it. Straight away she found a new home with a loving family with cats and… a very BIG dog. They became friends immediately.
We wish Christy (who is now called Sissy – a very appropriate name for the little princess she is) lots of luck in her new life with her new family.

On the 31st of March Digby and Dempsey, 2 of the 4 siblings, were transported to The Netherlands. There they were picked up by their foster family where they will stay until the Dutch organization "Dierenhulp zonder Grenzen" has found them a forever home. According to the pictures they are having a wonderful time there, but of course we hope that they will find a definite home soon.

And finally Darby and Daphne left today to Germany. They are staying with Klaus Franke waiting for their perfect family. If they are as lucky as the other dogs Klaus had, they will soon move again for the last time.

Christy found a new home

Christy has found a new home already! She now lives in Cologne and her new name is Louie.

http://www.wuestenwolf.de/?p=5644

From spring into the winter

Thanks to an early flight escort Christy left on Wednesday for Cologne to her temporary foster home. The little one immediately learned what snow is, because in Germany it is still winter while here spring has already begun.

We hope that Christy soon will find her for ever home.

Christy at her foster home

Help from abroad

It's time to introduce to you the organisations which are helping us.

Stichting Wereldasielen (World shelters) in The Netherlands is helping animals all over the world.

Since last summer they have helped to support us financially and with their contribution we were able to vaccinate 10 dogs (pups and adults) and neuter 6 dogs and 6 cats.

Klaus Franke in Germany.

He offers the dogs a half way home until they find a new loving family. Since we started working with him at the end of last summer, he has fostered 3 puppies and 2 adult dogs and all of them found excellent permanent homes.

Stichting Dierenhulp zonder Grenzen (Animal help without borders) in The Netherlands helps dogs and cats all over the world but especially in popular holiday countries.

They are helping us find the dogs new homes by putting them up for adoption on theirwebsite. In fact they have offered foster homes in Holland for the 4 puppies Daphne, Dempsey, Digby and Darby as soon as we have flight partners to Amsterdam.

Also they have put ACT as one of their projects on their website in order to raise money to help us.

We are really very grateful that we, young charity as we are, can already count on the help of these wonderful people!

Next step

We have now taken the next step towards registering ACT as a charity!

Last Saturday we had a very early appointment with our new lawyer in Kavala, on the mainland.  At this time of year there are only a couple of ferries a day to and from the island so we had to get up very early, but it was well worth while.

The lawyer had already supplied us with a draft of the charity's articles. These are the rules which dictate how the organization is run. At the meeting, we discussed these at length until we ended up with something suitable. Now the lawyer will draw up the final version of the articles and when it is ready we will arrange a meeting with all the members to sign the document. Then the next and final step is to register the charity. That can take 2 or 3 months but we will keep you all posted as things progress.

In the meantime, the practical work of helping the animals goes on, and we appreciate the continuing help and support that we receive from you.

Also we want to mention that meeting the setting up costs of the charity has only been made possible by all the donations we received after our call in January! So we would like to say a big THANK YOU to:

Anna, Daphne, Bruno, Petra, Fred, Klaus, Erna, Leo, Conny, Gonny, Karen, Mary, Ariane, Diny, Marjan, Nympha, Brigitte, Beate, Nikos, Val, Jackie, Lynne and Tanja.

Flightpartners

At the end of January 4 dumped puppies were found and are now living at a foster home in Theologos. You can read more about them and the other dogs on the page Adopt a dog.

Since the number of our foster homes is limited we are not able to help any more dogs at the moment. Therefore we are desperately looking for a forever home for all of them. Preferably on the island but we also have the possibility to find them a new home in Germany.

That means that we need flight partners to bring them over there. Because the tourist season hasn't started yet there are only few chances. So if you are flying from Thessaloniki or Kavala to Düsseldorf or Cologne, please please contact us!

Welcome to ACT!

ACT! Animal Care Thassos is the name of the new charity for animals on Thassos.

In order to register the charity officially we went to a lawyer to find out what was needed. We were shocked to hear that the lawyer and paperwork together would cost € 1,300! We couldn't pay such a large amount ourselves, so we asked family and friends on the island and abroad to help us.

Within 2 weeks the news has spread around and we have received the necessary amount of money, something we didn't expect to happen so soon. We are very grateful for that!

In the meantime we have been in contact with another lawyer, this time in Kavala, who offered us a much better price. This means that we will have some money left to use immediately for the animals instead of for paperwork. We are thinking of setting up a sterilization program. But of course we will keep you informed about that through this News page!

It also came clear that from starting the procedure it will take at least 3 months before the charity would be official and registered.

Of course we didn't want to wait that long before people could hear about us, so we decided to publish our website straight away.

So please share our website amongst your friends, on Facebook, Twitter or wherever. And if you think you can help us, don't hesitate to contact us!