Hi everybody!
For those of you that don't know I am
a Peace Corps volunteer in a rural Panamanian village called San
Juanito (province of Cocle). I wanted to take a minute to let you
know about this awesome project my community members and I are trying
to pull off. We want to spay and neuter a minimum of fifty pet dogs
and cats. We are working with a non-profit organization called Spay
Panama to host a low-cost spay and neuter clinic in San Juanito.
Spay Panama is an amazing group of veterinarians that travels all
over Panama offering clinics where they charge $25.00 per dog and
$15.00 per cat to not only spay and neuter, but also provide flea and
tick treatment, de-worming, an ear cleaning and a vitamin injection.
Spay Panama's services are greatly
needed by pet owners in the rural communities here. Spaying or
neutering your pet, not to mention any other type of treatment or
procedure is not quite as easy here as it is in the United States.
Vets here are notorious for cutting corners on proper cleaning of
their instruments and use of antibiotics. Many animals die after the
operation. There are a handful of good vets in Panama, but they
charge as much as $150.00 for spaying. As you can imagine this is
literally impossible for my people to pay, because the average
working wage is $10.00 per day. Even if they were to find a good vet
and save the money, the good vet is still hours away in public
transport. They would have to convince and probably bribe the bus
drivers on at least two different buses to make the trip. How do I
know all this? I have done it. Once for my cat and another time for a
dog I rescued.
As you can see Spay Panama is probably
the only way San Juanito will ever see their pets healthy, happy,
spayed and neutered.
I held a informational meeting with my
town to talk about the program and discuss their concerns. We talked
about how their dogs don’t live long because they suffer from an
STD. We talked about the chaos and noise when a female dog goes into
heat and a dozen male dogs follow her and fight to mate with her for
days. We talked about how its tough to keep your dog around your
house and so many dogs are loose, pulling garbage into the street. We
discussed how most female cats in the tropics are pregnant their
whole lives and the male cats are known to leave home for weeks
looking for a female only to come back injured and skinny if at all.
We talked about when the pregnancies come to term and most of the
litters die because there simply is not enough food. The sustenance
farming lifestyle makes it hard enough to feed one's family, farm
animals, and pets, let alone litter after litter of kittens or
puppies. The community sees this as not only a problem for their
pets, but also a human health issue. The meeting ended in a unanimous
vote to try to raise money to bring the clinic to San Juanito.
To raise funds we cooked over 120
tamales and sold them for 50¢
a piece (some people bought theirs on credit because they didn’t
have a spare dollar in the house). After covering our costs we earned
$40.55. the project leadership group wants to use these earnings
to put together another fundraiser to try to earn more money, but I
foresee at $25.00 per dog and $15.00 per cat that they are going to
need some help. That’s where you all come in!
If you do the math (fifty dogs at
$25.00 a piece) our fund-raising goal is $1250.000. Spay Panama is
offering us a direct donation option where they will earmark your
donation specifically for San Juanito. This is great because as a
registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, your donation to Spay
Panama will be tax-deductible.
To donate please navigate to
http://www.spaypanamasanimals.com/index.html
, click on “donate” in the right hand corner, fill in your name
and information and make sure to specify that your donation is for
San Juanito.
Or visit www.spaypanama.org
and click on the American flag in the right hand corner and follow
the steps to donate. Also PLEASE
take a screen shot and send it to spaysanjuanito@gmail.com
so
I personally can keep track of your donations.
Remember every $25.00 donation
sponsors another dog's costs, which means another lucky dog will
receive the health benefits from the spay and neuter clinic. For
every $15.00 donation another lucky cat will stay closer to home
reducing the number of stray animals in San Juanito. With every
donation you are helping a community realize its health project and
motivate more people to be responsible pet owners in the future. All
of us here in San Juanito are thankful for your consideration and
your support. There is so much compassion in this world for animals,
all you have to do is reach out and you will find it!
Sincerely,
Lauren Hayes
Peace Corps Panama
San Juanito, Cocle
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