The story of Lola

Feb 2010

A bit thankyou to everybody who supported Lola and generously donated to her transition to the UK.

Lola is now home and has settled in well with the other dogs and cats we own.

http://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/5028913.The_language_of_love_in_Malmesbury/

Lola's story

In August 2009, my family spent three weeks in Italy on holiday. We stayed in a remote hilltop town, the place was lovely, but sadly their attitude to animal welfare is disgusting.

On the second day of our holiday we noticed a little black and white dog wandering around the streets. This was not an unusual site in the town, but in this particular case, the dog appeared to have been neglected. The dog looked terrible and had open wounds and sores all over its body and a dry cracked nose. On one occasion, when the dog was just trying to find a shaded spot to rest, locals went out of their way to beat and kick the dog to move it along.

We were appalled at this behaviour and my daughters, aged 14, 10 & 5, offered the dog a drink and threw food to her. For the next few days, my daughters took food and water out to the dog whenever they could.

The dog then started to follow us around, but to our disgust, the locals were still cruel to the dog. We witnessed locals kicking the dog and hitting it with sticks and chasing it away from everywhere we went. We ended up putting the dog on a lead and looked after her to give a fighting chance whilst we were there.

We were informed by the local priest that the dog had been abandoned and had been living rough for the past couple of weeks. We found a local vet, because we wanted to help the dog. She had wounds that looked infected. We paid for antibiotic injections, flea and worm treatments.

We asked the vet about rescue centres, to be told that they were miserable places where government funding was taken, but the dogs were usually poisoned or shot.

By now, my daughters had name the dog Lola and after they spent two nights emotional and in tears over the plight of the dog, we all came to the decision that the best way to give Lola a chance, was to try and get her back home to the UK. We were so horrified by the behaviour of the locals and the authorities’ attitudes towards animal welfare.

We had a friend in the UK, who was currently house-sitting our other pets, who helped us find kennels in Bracknell, the Ryslip Kennels. Ryslip kennels were very helpful with arranging the import license and assisting us with quarantine in the UK at short notice.

After a week and a half of phone calls, we were able to contact a pet travel agent in Rome, arrange the vets travel certificates, travel crate and subsequently we were able to book Lola onto a flight back to UK quarantine.

We are not a wealthy family and we ended up using up our emergency funding available on our credit card. We still have another £1200.00 to find over the next four months to pay for the UK quarantine. This is on top of the current expenditure that we have already spent out. We have currently spent out €668 for the flights, €219 for a flight approved travel crate, €170 for vet fees and finally £660 up-front fees for two months kennels.

Lola will now be in quarantine until February 2010, where she will become officially part of our family and we can bring her home. She will be loved for and cared for as much as our current pets.

As we are not wealthy and we are appealing to the generous nature of people to help us with funding.

We are an animal loving family, which unfortunately for us has become a costly habit. We have already rescued two cats, approximately four years ago. They were found in a plastic bag on a freezing cold winter's night (it was -4°c) by a lady walking her dog. She contacted me through a friend of mine, to ask for some advice. I asked her to bring the cats to me, but after I looked after them for the night, I just couldn't bear to see them go to the cat's home. We named them Stanley and Purdy. Purdy's unfortunate start in life was a result of her ill health at the time and has resulted in a nasty gum disease. Purdy had all of her teeth removed by the vet in the sprint of 2009. She is now healthy and loved by all of us in the family. Stanley was a little luckier with his health and has been a source of much entertainment over the past 4 years. We also have another cat, who is very much a house cat and lounges around the house for most of the day, really only going out to do her business!

In addition to the cats, we also have three lovely dogs; an elderly black labrador, an ageing Jack Russell and an energetic young Patterdale Terrier who keeps the other two young :-)