GRIN 2012 FALL TRANSPORTS & AID TO SHELTERS CONTINUE!
GRIN NEWS FOR FALL 2012
SHELTER AID AND FALL TRANSPORTS CONTINUE!
GRIN has had a busy Fall Season coordinating 21 transports from October through December. At this writing 19 transports have been completed with happily homed hounds. Our last four will come on home during the next two months.
We are also happy to announce that your support of GRIN has allowed us to help the following shelters this fall with EAF (Emergency Assistance Fund) grants and Loly’s Fund Grants. LFGs specifically helps shelters in need and is the thrust of what GRIN is focused on doing. The following shelters we have helped are:
1) 112Carlota Galgos. Char del Rio received a grant to help with their transition to their new finca/shelter in Malaga. The funds have helped them purchase building materials for their quarantine kennel. We are so happy to be part of their work!
2) Galgo Connection Spain. A grant was donated to Silvia Bordetas Gil for ongoing support of medical cases she is overseeing with dogs such as Troya and Suri. The cost of the pensione/boarding facility comes quickly every month and the upkeep of the dogs is constant until their adoption. We are glad we could help Silvia with her vet bills this month!
3) Galgos en Familia. A grant was given to Vera Thorenaar for her shelter and a portion for an emergency hip surgery for a Galgo named Payaso that is in her care as well as two others that need surgery. Without our contribution for major vet emergency help, other needs could not be covered. We thank you all for your support!
4) Ibizan Hound Rescue received a grant to help with boarding fees for three Podencos that they have taken in at GRIN’s request. One in particular was saved because they now had the funds for the pensione. We are so happy to help the Podencos in their care!
OUR FALL TRANSPORTS CONTINUE!!
For all of you who follow GRIN’S placements of our Spanish Galgos and Podencos, we would like you to all feel that you are a part of these happy endings! The time involved and the effort by many people to bring these “Ambassadogs” to forever homes is huge. However, the result of this labor is that more people learn about the plight of these wonderful dogs and in turn donate and help promote those shelters that continue the hard work of rescue, rehabilitation, and homing. Your support is essential and we thank you all!
Thanks also to our international transporters and volunteers for helping GRIN! This year the following people took on the airports and travel with dogs, which is no small task and we want to say a special thanks to all of them. Starting in October, Marylou Hecht, Telma Shaw, Beatriz Sanchez Elvira, Terrianne and John Basch, Dr. Jason Cordiero, Chris Plaskett, Jeff Wehrwein, Ron Dillard, and still to come, Amy Kahn, Linda Sheffield and Tracy-Ann Reading.
Also we want to mention all the people involved in transporting other peoples dogs once in the states. Ms. Michael Owen VA, Fast Friends NH and Grateful Greyhounds NY, who, with their friends, helped tremendously as well as Pam Rende and Ty Montgomery of PA and friends of the galgos Don and Elaine Irving who greeted GRIN at the LAX airport just to help and support us! We could not have done it without all of our friends who embraced this labor of love including and most importantly our wonderful adopters! Thank You from GRIN and the Galgos and Podencos thank you too!!
2012 Fall Rescue Trip Part Two - Murcia Spain
2012 GRIN FALL RESCUE TRIP
PART TWO
MURCIA SPAIN
GRIN Board Members Telma Shaw and Marylou Hecht continued on the second half of their rescue trip to Spain.
Sept 2012. Leaving Malaga behind our friend Dioni del Rio of 112carlotagalgos drove us north towards Granada half way to Puerto Lumbreras. We took advantage of our trip to transport a young 6 month old Mastin pup who Char del Rio had rescued from the kill station and had found a home for her close to where we were headed. Tigger rode with us that day on her way to her forever home! A great way to start week two!
Once we reached Puerto Lumbreras, we met up with Tigger’s mom and did the happy exchange and visited with Diane and Brian Hughes of Ibizan Hound Rescue over a cup of coffee at the local hotel. Marylou and I then drove to Murcia to meet up with our friend Tina Solera of Galgos del Sol. We stayed at the 525 Hotel in Murcia which is a nice hotel and very convenient within walking distance to the beach with a promenade next to the hotel with lots of restaurants, banks, and coffee shops all the necessary conveniences! Murcia is an English expat haven and I was surprised by all the English pubs, fish and chips shops and Indian restaurants in Spain!
Tina met up with us at the hotel, and it was nonstop from there.. visiting at her new finca (small ranch) with all her dogs, meeting her friend Zoe at her vets who rescued a galga the night before, trying to catch abandoned galgos in fields and industrial areas, sharing lunch with her friends, meeting a galguero who was handing over a little girl to us that Tina named Marylou, meeting Andrea of Andreas Animal Rescue and Barbara Galloway, at her home. We also met another stray galga that Tina picked up on her way to meet us at the hotel. She happened to be the easiest rescue she had encountered. Little Telma walked up to her and got in the car! We were so happy to see Tina beaming when she met us at the hotel entrance with Telma in the car! Another “normal” day of rescue with Tina!
As fate would have it, the day after we reached Murcia, on a Friday, we experienced the worst storm of the year. The day before we had driven on the road from Puerto Lumbreras, across a bridge on our way to Murcia. The rain didn’t stop for 24 hours and the conditions deteriorated rapidly and it became the storm of the season, with flooding and loss of 10 lives and hundreds of animals. The bridge we had crossed the day before had collapsed and the roads were in ruins. Little did we know that one of the podencos, Chico, we were bringing back a few days later would be stranded at his foster home. We were so sad that he would have to be left behind, but with some quick work on Tina’s side with one of our GRIN adopters in the states, we were able to give another podenca a chance at her new life. I would then be bringing little Janet the podenca to California instead. Side note, we did bring Chico the podenco to the U.S. a few weeks later.
On Sunday, the day before we left Murcia, we enjoyed a final sunny day on the beach with some of our GRIN dogs who would be traveling in the coming weeks. Izzy, Henry and Janet enjoyed their “holiday” at the beach and their photo shoot for our GRIN 2013 calendar. A great day was spent with Tina and her family as well. We enjoyed a delicious paella at the beach that day with the doggies sitting under our table!
The night of departure arrived and we geared up for our midnight goodbyes with Tina and we left from Murcia with podenca Janet and with our friends from Ibizan Hound Rescue, who took us on the five hour trip to the Madrid airport. Everything went smoothly thanks to Diane and Brian who calmly helped us at the airport with everything, putting crates together, adding the buckets, holding the dogs and even taking care of some doggie mishaps right in the middle of all the bustling travelers!
We also met up with dear friend Silvia Bordetas Gil of Galgo Connection Spain with her three dogs, Dartacan, Electra and Copo (now Amigo) and as usual it was a hectic and exciting to meet our GRIN dogs at the airport and we quickly got everything in order and Marylou left for her flight to NY with two dogs and I left for my flight to Los Angeles with the other two. Happy to say we both arrived at our destinations safely but probably more tired and worn out than the dogs!! It is amazing how well they do on the flights..they walk out of their crates pretty unscathed and wagging tails!
The level of commitment by our friends in Spain is what this whole story is about. These ladies, all of them mentioned in these two accounts, from Vera and her volunteers of Galgos en Familia in Malaga, Char del Rio and her family of 112Carlotagalos also in Malaga, Silvia of Galgo Connection Spain Valencia, Diane and Brian Ibizan Hound Rescue in Puerto Lumbreras and of course Miss Tina of Galgos del Sol in Murcia, are the heart of the rescues GRIN is able to help. We thank them for their tireless work, their commitment, their enthusiasm, their tenacity their tears and their triumphs to keep on when it is so hard. Nothing is easy about what they do, nothing. They deserve our respect and our help. We are humbled by how hard they work, and are so grateful that we have supporters that help us help them .
Thank you everyone who is a part of this story, whether I named you or not, every person who has helped GRIN, who has donated in any way with your time, talents, your financial help, or by adopting a needy dog, all of you have helped these great friends to continue doing what they are passionate about, saving the dogs.
Yes, it is all about the dogs, always has been always will be…
Telma Shaw