Dear animal friends who have found an animal in Boa Vista that you think needs help!

First of all: Our association with its "veterinary pool" has made it its primary task not to let suffering continue to come into this world. Our extensive castration programmes are indispensable for this and demand a lot from our vets and helpers from morning till night. Day in, day out! As well as our financial possibilities.

 

Of course, with this preventive measure we do not close our eyes to the suffering that already exists!

 

But: As a rule, you as a holidaymaker have no medical training. Therefore, it is extremely difficult for you to recognise a really serious emergency. In addition, we ask you to consider that you are reporting street or beach animals to us, which are not comparable to well-cared for private animals. This means that we are often called even though there is no emergency. Following up on your report is very time-consuming for us, because sometimes we have to drive many kilometres through our roads to the places you describe in order to then:

 

    a) not find the animal at this place or

    b) find out that it is not an acute emergency.

 

Please bear in mind that we are dealing with several hundred animals on Boa Vista who are not as well as we would all like them to be. However, one missing hour at the clinic keeps us from performing two neuterings, which is exactly what we want to do to change these sad circumstances in the long run, or does not let us deal with one or more urgencies that have arrived.

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However, we appreciate that you want to help. We welcome your open eyes and your empathy. We know the moments of "falling in love" of "I'll help you no matter what it takes" or of "feeling alone". Unfortunately, however, we also receive emergency calls that are not.

"Please take care of the cat in XY, it's been meowing with hunger all day and let me know what's become of it. We unfortunately had to leave yesterday."

 

We are working flat out from morning till night to reduce this misery with neutering. Please do not stop us from doing this.

We have often discussed emergency care throughout the island, but fail because of the necessary funding, the size of the island and the staff available. Please note that, for the before mentioned reasons, we cannot answer every email.

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In order to reach a compromise, we would like to offer you the following:

If you discover an animal that you think will not survive without human help or medical treatment, please try to take it to us.

If you are in a Hotel, try to contact the manager through the reception. He can probably help you to let bring the animal to us.

 

If you would like to adopt the animal later after the legally required vaccinations and procedure, we can only admit the animal after emergency care if you contribute to the costs. Otherwise, we will release the animal back to its original place after it has recovered. Likewise, in the case of adoption, we pass on to you the further costs incurred by colleagues on site (for example, operations, vaccinations, EU/UK pet travel documents...).

Bear in mind that you have to provide a flight box for traveling to EU/UK and help us to find the best and easiest transport solution. You must bear the costs of the flight. These vary from airline to airline and sometimes depend on the weight of the animal. The otherwise usual agency fee does not apply if you have borne the costs of "your" animal.

 

Dear holidaymakers, we do not take these measures to gain any advantage. It is exclusively about the animal! But we ask for your understanding that we have to deal more restrictively with calls for help. Every day we are bombarded with requests which - in relation - are not real emergencies and because of which we could no longer carry out our neutering operations. We would like to react to this with this compromise, but also to make you and all other people aware that real help means more and costs more than just sending an email or SMS.