Taking off from where we left off in our last AKI Blog post about our Partner Helping Hands for Hounds of Honduras, Pilar is continuing to work with Organizacion ARI, a shelter/rescue organization in Tegucigalpa, and the founder, Wendy.
Pilar had copied about 15 pounds worth of humane ed material in Spanish and English donated by Lakes Animal Friendship Society to Animal-Kind International for onward donation to HHHH. In May, Pilar and Wendy took some of the humane ed material and a puppy from ARI on their visit with 15 students and 2 teachers in 2nd grade and 24 students and 2 teachers in 3rd grade. Pilar said, "the students loved everything. They really liked making the puppets."
"And the puppy was a hit with the students of course."
On one of her visits to the Organizacion ARI shelter, Pilar brought blankets, meds, collars, toys, and other useful things for the shelter's 32 dogs and 20 cats.
In June, Pilar made a visit to another school, again armed with several pounds of humane ed material. This time 20 1st and 2nd graders experienced the fun of humane ed class.
Do you remember Dusty? (From our April AKI Blog post: Dusty's owner wasn't feeding Dusty enough and he was losing weight, he was covered in ticks, he was anemic, and overall he was a sick and unhappy little dog. Pilar helped a relative of Dusty's owner rescue the dog and paid for Dusty's vet care. Eventually Dusty was adopted to a wonderful home.) On June 7, Dusty was neutered (thanks to HHHH and AKI supporters).
Pilar gave the niece of the woman who adopted Dusty one of the Lakes Animal Friendship Society doggy coloring books (it includes some fun and useful lessons about how to take good care of your dog).
At the end of June, a fellow biologist and ex-student of Pilar's used some of the LAFS material in a presentation to 20 students and 2 teachers. Pilar is making sure our donation from LAFS gets spread all over Honduras!
The community spay/neuter surgeries, a joint effort between HHHH and Patrick, an American living in Tegucigalpa, started up again, this time, with 2 dogs belonging to a gardener who works in the community. It turned out though that one of the dogs was aggressive and very nervous and the vet's assistant was almost bitten. So instead of staying at the HHHH Sanctuary post-spay, the dog was returned directly to the owner. (It seems the dog is fine with the gardener and gets aggressive when nervous....which is understandable in this very strange situation.)
And now for sad news. On July 21, strong, sweet Thor died. He started dragging one back leg and seemed to be in pain, and then, the day before he died, he stopped eating. His heart gave out. Thor was a rottweiler who had several people interested in adopting him over the years. The problem was that all of them wanted a guard dog and thought a rottweiler would be ideal for that. There was no way Pilar would adopt sweet Thor (or any dog) out as a guard dog. So he lived his life -happily-at the HHHH Sanctuary.
