Cretan Animal Welfare Group

If you too would like to make a difference to animals and people alike who have been forgotten in the remoter areas of the island, YOU CAN!

Each animal cared for cost us only 12 EUR! Please donate to help us continue our work and make a difference!

The areas we visited were: Katharo Plateau, Kritsa, Kalo Horio, Prinas, Lassithi Plateau(consists of 18 villages), Messara Area, Tylissos, Mochos, Avdou, Gonies, Agios Georgios and Stalis!

As you can see on the last photo of this slide show, the spoilt old donkey that enjoys eating sweets is still going strong. It was lovely to see her and her owners again and despite the bad habit she does not seem to be suffering through it. The lovely sisters who own her take good care of her and asked for advice on whether they should continue the treatments we had recommended in April. They brought out a chopped apple for their girl to eat after her dental check and a bag of apples for us to have as we continued to our next call.

The results are out with a staggering 93 animals cared for within a week by the Equine Team!!!

These included 60 donkeys, 28 horses, 2 ponies, 1 mule and 2 goats.

This gives us a 50% rise in the numbers of animals whose welfare we have improved and many more happy owners!

Gayner, Diana, Hans, Gary and Sue had left early with the car this first morning of our equine outreach programme. They went to Agios Nikoloas, Kritsa, Katharo Plateau, Kalo Chorio and Prinas.

As two more supporters were very interested in coming as well it was decided to take the mobile clinic. Other cars weren’t available and it might attract more attention which could have a positive influence on this very important programme for the Cretan donkeys…

Well it did attract attention! But not in the way expected!

The clinic didn’t want to start although we had driven with it the previous day! Trying to start it with starting-cables didn’t have an effect! So lets try it another way…

Let’s tow it the Greek way! 

Or is this the English way?? 

Anyway, it was one way or the other working and we managed to get it started! Straight to the mechanic though and other transport needed to be found quick to be able to follow the rest of the group! Which we did, more about that soon!

Michael, Yiannis and the other passing neighbour:

Efxaristoeme poli gia tin voitheia sas!!

Thursday 8th of October ‘our’ Dutch farrier Hans and  English equine-dentist Gary arrived in Crete to help us once again with our Equine Outreach Project.

The arrival of Hans in the morning went according to schedule, but the arrival of Gary late at night was planned a bit different…

This cute little dog called Scarf managed to lock everybody out of the car while all luggage and both carkeys were still inside!

Have you ever seen people trying to make a dog open a car door by making it press a tiny little button?

It looks something like this!

After about an hour or so some of us still continued while others showed their patience…….

But finally the persevering person wins! The car got unlocked (not by the useless dog that fell asleep inside but by a piece of metal!), the luggage was taken out and Hans, Gary and the rest of the team could go to sleep to get ready for the busy programme.

As you can imagine we temporarily removed this sticker from the car window