EDIT: Hi everyone! You did it!!! We reached the goal in just 8h!! Thank you so much!

I am going to keep the fundraiser up for a few more days. The shelter will use any additional money raised to buy more vaccines so that they can share with their community and ensure street dogs are also vaccinated. So please keep donating if you feel so compelled, and thank you!

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Urgent help is needed for my friends at the Fundación Animalove near Bogota, Colombia.

I visited the shelter back in 2019. Over the years, you have generously helped me raise funds to support them with medical care, food, vaccines, and other essential things. Once more, they are faced with a big crisis, and I hope we can help them. The Foundation is the beautiful home to nearly 400 dogs, who live in groups in large enclosures and run all day freely.

The region of Bogota is facing a severe canine distemper outbreak due to a lack of vaccination during the pandemic and rainy weather. Distemper is a deadly virus that attacks puppies' and dogs' respiratory, gastrointestinal and nervous systems. Though it can be treatable, it requires intensive care, which is very difficult in a shelter setup, and things can escalate quickly (the death rate is about 50% in adults and 80% in puppies).

Sadly, the Foundation has not been able to get vaccines donated by their regular supplier, and they cannot afford to buy them. Every day that passes, their dogs risk being exposed to this deadly, highly contagious disease.

One distemper vaccine costs $14 per year, plus transport. As soon as the vaccine arrives, it can be stored in the refrigeration facility at the Foundation, and the permanent on-site vet can treat the whole population of dogs within a week. To vaccinate every dog, we need to raise $5,500 as soon as possible. Any additional funds raised will be used towards medical care for the dogs.

To add to this distemper crisis, the Foundation recently took in dogs from another “shelter.” Three hundred dogs were in the care of a woman who left them to starve and die in horrifying conditions. The dogs in her care were starved, skin and bones, dying, injured, and living in squaller. The Foundation did not hesitate and took in the most urgent cases. Investigations are in progress.

Add to that an all-time low adoption rate and an increase of dogs and puppies left at the Foundation’s gates… These scenarios increase the risk of contamination and have again put the Foundation in a financial crisis.

Thank you for your support!

Sophie