Here we are, the beginning of 2022. A year probably many of us never have even tried to imagine what it would be like before. That we‘d even get here; well, here we are. For Perros Libres this will be the best year yet. We just passed 5 months in operation now, and so far have successfully operated as a solely donation-based non-profit organization since our inception in August. But this is only the beginning: and our responsibilities have already passed far beyond what I’d imagine they’d be at by this point in our development. There are currently 13 dogs living with me, sleeping at our new dog sanctuary. Some of them (Scabby, Tostada, and Kiwi) decide often to sleep at their respective local ”dueño’s” or owner’s houses, making our load slightly lighter on occasion. They all came from previous local families, or foreign travelers that have left, that we ”adopted”, and nursed to health from various illnesses. It so happens to be that when these locally adopted dogs heal, they often prefer to return to where they came from. This is our ”release” part of our philosphy put into action. Kiwi is one of the best examples of this: he lives half the time with his old dueño ever since we moved.
Dogs that come from the “streets”,
very often have a local family that does feed them and considers them theirs. However, this amount of food and nutrition is often not sufficient for their optimal health. They catch diseases quite easily, that normally healthy dogs are not so susceptible too. The immune system is the key to all this: encouraging an animals’ health, instead of their vulnerability to various illnesses.
So basically, if we are able to heal dogs that come from locals, and then return them back to them: this is the work. Perros Libres. Free dogs. However, one must also instruct and educate how to give the dog the best care. This is the hard part, which I have to do by communicating in locally-used languages with the indigenous to have exemplary dog care. This is no easy task: however, we’ve taken it on.
Perros Libres has operated round-the-clock since we began in August, in our old rickety house in Tzununa which we rented from a local family. However they didn’t really want 10 dogs living at the property, and this year we were told we had to move, on pretty short notice. However we’ve made enough friends at this point for this transition to go relatively painlessly and fast. Our new place is gorgeous, with a view of the lake, incredible security and protection thanks to a large family that surrounds us and owns this land. Oh, did we also mention it’s half-price the rent of the last place? Perros Libres has become so much more effecient in our cost-of-living here, especially with this move, and can now succcessfuly operate on a much more humble budget. This also was hard work to figure out: but fate put us in this new, much better location. Thank God. We’re able to operate with much more efficiency, safety, and economic efficiency as well.
So what’s a day look like with Perros Libres now?
As I’ve gotten more and more comfortable taking care of the animals on my own, I’ve got a much better flow with each day. The dogs get out atleast twice a day with walks around our high-up property, often without even touching a road that has tuk-tuks. However, without being able to avoid them completely, we have to train our dogs to walk on the side of the road in big packs to avoid them and the big cars. We have some cool video of this, here:
Walking the dogs: 102
I am so grateful…
…that this has gone so well. We have survived, month by month, thanks to all of you who have donated to support our cause. I’ll admit, we’ve cut it close month-to-month. But we’ve had consistent enough donations that we pulled it off for 5 months now! And because we now know what our monthly budget is, approximately, we are able to plan out each month really well for in terms of what we need, and what’s great is it is much less thanks to our move. Our cost of living has more than been cut-in-half, and we can survive with little. Our donation system simply needs to support our monthly dog’s needs, which mostly is now food thanks to how big we have gotten, and how many dogs we help each week. So for this,
We now have implemented a monthly-donation system.
Observe on our front page, this ”monthly donation” button. This links to a very cool program we found called Donorbox, which allows non-profits to receive monthly donations automated through PayPal. If you wish to be one of the first people to contribute monthly to Perros Libres, please try and use our new Donorbox monthly donation system. You can choose what you’d like to donate monthly. This is what it looks like, either below or alongside the PayPal donate button (depending on web or mobile viewing), this is a different button, specifically designed for monthly donations. If you want to make a one-time donation, you can use either button but make sure to click ’1-time donation’. Take a look below:
This new system will allow us to meet our budget much more easily, without as much chance or risk hoping we receive a specific amount of donations each month. Please consider using this system, as it can provide for us a consistent income and much more easily manage our operation. Thank you so much for your support of Perros Libres, we cannot be here without you.
That’s all for today, folks.
We hope that your new year is going as well as ours has started. We look forward to building an entire town-sustaining Dog Sanctuary starting the first quarter of this year. You’ve helped us get to this point, where we are truly ready to make the big leap. Look forward to more updates about our current dogs, homes we find for them, and the food and medicine we’re bringing to all the dogs of Tzununa.
Libertad por los Perros.
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