- Screen Colours:
- Normal
- Black & Yellow
Update 2018
Since 2010 we have seen an increasing and swift growth of animal refuges throughout Portugal. Most importantly, these are Portuguese charities created and run by Portuguese people. Most of them rely heavily on volunteers everyday to maintain their existence. Survival is a day by day affair and many refuges still have very poor infrastructures. 200 dogs per refuge is common and some have many more than this.
A few refuges have cats and specially made cat feeding stations for feral cats are more common too.
A recent change in Portuguese law making it illegal to automatically kill dogs that end up in council dog shelters is most welcome but means that even more animals need help.
All these changes reflect a growing more compassionate attitude, especially among the young with regard to animals. However these changes result in even more animals surviving to spend their lives in captivity. Typically refuges we know manage to re-home annually around 10-15% of their animals. Quite a contrast to northern Europe.
There are simply not nearly enough homes to offer these animals in Portugal. So it is essential that new homes and foster homes can be found overseas. Typically these are offered mostly within Germany, Holland and UK.
Top action priority for animals in Portugal now
- continuing and enlarging street sterilization programmes
- educating local people about the benefits of sterilizing their pets
- finding more homes abroad to release refuge space for the next needy animal
Most abandoned Portuguese dogs are easy going, loving, and friendly with people and other dogs, wanting only kindness and some individual attention.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quotes from Famous People
"At the checkout I sometimes take an item out of the basket and leave it on the nearest shelf. It's nearly always something fattening. That way I cover my fiver a month for the dogs. They get fed and I lose weight. Win - win!"
Not a quote from a famous person but somehow it impresses me as much as the following quotations from the famous.
When you read the quotations you might be surprised at how strongly some famous people have felt about animal welfare. However, their words have had little effect in the face of lack of concern, ignorance or poverty.
When Jillian and I visit a Portuguese refuge and the dogs are delighted to see us, we know that we cannot offer a home to any of them. And the dogs don't realise how thin the ice is. Although many of them seem happy with each other - happy prisoners who don't necessarily want to be rehomed - they are only one step up from the town dogs which roam the streets and live rough with no medical attention, constantly foraging for food, homeless and often lacking human kindness. And of course the town dogs breed. Constantly.
In Portugal there are now many animal refuges run almost exclusively by enthusiastic young volunteers. (Read the account of our visits in 2009 and 2010.) But they lack cohesion. They run independently of each other and have no umbrella organisation to help them.
Portugal is near to the UK - go and see for yourself what is being done by these young people. It is not one of the world's Great Causes, and it is in a country which does not grab the headlines, and I'm sure this work is being done in other Southern European countries, where the population can be far less amenable to change in animal treatment. Greece, for example, will horrify you.
In my fantasy world, someone somewhere with some money to spare, decides to create a model animal refuge in a Southern European country - a ‘centre of excellence‘ - which they can show to their grandchildren and is an example which other countries in Southern Europe and further afield may follow. If Portuguese Animal Welfare could be some tiny part of a revolution which is not a fantasy and which helps to gradually transform the worldwide treatment of animals, then the quotations which follow could eventually become redundant.
Ian Lister
"Never doubt that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead, American Anthropologist
"It is as if life had said, 'I am going to send you into a world of cruelty. I shall make you sensitive to pain, fear, heat, cold, hunger and starvation. In this world of cruelty, I shall make you defenseless. In addition, I shall strike you dumb.' This is the kind of world that animals are born into."
- Grace Johnson, Animal Activist
"Please put the ladybug outside without harming her."
(to his butler) -- Winston Churchill
The value of a society is based upon its kindness to animals."
-- Albert Schweitzer
"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men."
- St. Francis of Assisi, Roman Catholic friar, founder of the Franciscans Order
"By loving and understanding animals, perhaps we humans shall come to understand each other."
- Dr. Louis J. Camuti
"The awful wrongs and sufferings forced upon the innocent, helpless, faithful animal race form the blackest chapter in the whole world's history."
- Edward Freeman, English Historian and Commentator
"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals."
- Immanuel Kant
"As custodians of the planet it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness, love, and compassion. That these animals suffer through human cruelty is beyond understanding. Please help to stop this madness."
- Richard Gere, American Actor
"When a man has pity on all living creatures then only is he noble."
- Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, Indian founder of Buddhism Religion and Philosophy
"Many people have learned through relating to animals what it is to care for and accept responsibility for another being."
- Richard H. Pitcairn, American Veterinarian, Pet Nutritionist and Author
"If a man aspires toward a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals."
- Count Leo Tolstoy, Russian Novelist and Philosopher
"Our treatment of animals will someday be considered barbarous. There cannot be perfect civilization until man realizes that the rights of every living creature are as sacred as his own."
- Dr. David Starr Jordan, American Biologist and Educator
"Animals are such agreeable friends, they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms."
- George Eliot, Female English Novelist (Mary Ann Evans)
"The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality."
- Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher
"The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men."
- Leonardo Da Vinci, Italian Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Musician, Engineer, and Scientist
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
- Mahatma Gandhi, Indian Statesman and Philosopher
"We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace."
- Albert Schweitzer, Alsatian Theologian, Musician, and Medical Missionary
"Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Wherever one notices them, they constitute a sign of ignorance and brutality which cannot be painted over even by all the evidence of wealth and luxury."
- Alexander Von Humbolt, German Naturalist
Helping Out (Cartoon from Royston Robertson www.roystonrobertson.co.uk)