Hello!

My name is Tanya and my husband is Jim.

I want to share our story about travelling in Albania on our honeymoon. The weather was hot, the views were beautiful (except places where locals dump their rubbish), the sea was warm & food was tasty. Then we started to see the other side of Albania, which was not advertised or mentioned in the blogs we had read. And, what we saw & experienced left us heartbroken, devastated, and disappointed in people and we could not enjoy ourselves as were fully engaged in helping, rescuing, feeding, giving water & finding people who can help. It is the animal abuse, in particular to dogs. I am talking about - people would not feed them, would not give them water even in +39 degrees heat but they would spray water on the roofs of the houses, stairs, roads but not a single bowl with water for a dog/cat in the scorching heat! We saw skinny dogs (you could count their ribs) running desperately in search of food between rows of cafes & restaurants, we saw dogs/cats hit by cars on the side of the roads covered in blood, we saw locals kicking a starving dog in his tummy, injured dogs, and we were in shock, we cried from hopelessness, we could not understand why the majority of people were so cruel, and so abusive to those pure souls, who have done nothing wrong. The others, including some holiday makers, (not all as we did find some compassionate tourists – especially from Germany) were just indifferent to their suffering!

This is our "graffiti" we did to remind people to at least give water to them!

It does not matter what country you are born in, your religion, your background – we are HUMANS. You either have humanity, compassion or you do not and, it looks like many Albanian people are cold hearted & soulless. They are friendly with tourists though as tourists are a source of income for them.

We got attached to 4 stray dogs who we met at one of the lookouts. One dog had a broken paw. We fed & gave water to them twice a day and were trying to find the vet we could take him to. We decided to actually do something to rescue them as we could not live with ourselves if we just abandoned them there without any help.

We were going to adopt the dog with the broken paw, together with another one, Stripy, who was very thin, starving and probably beaten and who we were going to find a good home in the UK. There are not many vets in Albania & the nearest was about 1.5 hour drive away and all the shelters we called (there are not many either) were overcrowded and none of them could accept him. Some of the vets we contacted asking for help to this stray dog quoted prices we could not afford and they would not do it cheaper (some of them are making money even on stray dogs)! We could not find compassion even from some vets there! After spending many hours every day researching/calling/messaging, we found some kind people who were willing to help at a decent price. When we came to collect the Dogs, neither of them was at the lookout. It broke our hearts as we had prepared everything for their rescue. We do not know what happened to them. We went through an emotional breakdown but did not give up although we had to leave Albania.

My husband returned to Albania from UK, a week later again, he made a special journey to find them. Our Dogs were not there except the puppy, who was the daughter of the dog with a broken paw.

He took the puppy (photo above) to the vet and put her into a boarding place afterwards. We shortly named her ‘Marla’. At the vet, there was another street puppy, called ‘Mika’, who was going to be adopted by a lady in Sweden, but this person changed her mind & abandoned her again. So, we decided to bring that puppy too and to find a loving home for her in the UK as animal adoption is non existent in Albania.

This is Mika at the vets., she is kind natured and very cute!

All the dogs we met in Albania – they are so gentle, loving, and not aggressive at all despite being beaten, starved, dehydrated & betrayed. Their eyes are still full of hope, love and gratefulness. They licked my hands when I stroked them, their tails could not stop wagging and they followed us to our car. They deserve better lives; they are such pure souls! I wish I could rescue all of them!

This is Marla at the boarding place with little Picollino a few weeks old on her.

The puppies need to go through all vaccinations, blood tests, microchipping, deworming, issue of EU passports etc before we can bring them to the UK. The complication is that Albania is not in EU, so will require more money to get the EU passport after the Albanian one, as they have to be taken to Corfu, (Greece) (EU) for a Titer test (250 EUR per dog). The dogs have to be board there for approximately 2 months (300 EUR a month per dog).

Then transportation to the UK (1,700 EUR), the Titer tests and boarding are the most expensive things.

We are asking for your generosity to contribute towards saving these 2 lucky puppies, Marla and Mika. We have paid some expenses already but there will be more money needed and we struggle a bit to cover everything by ourselves. Your help will be very much appreciated. Thank you from the bottom of our and their hearts!

Thank you

Marla and Mika & Tanya and Jim xxx

We hope to rescue these adorable puppies at the end of Aug 2024, we will personally drive to Albania and recover them.