MY ITALIAN JOURNEY PART ONE.

Still I haven’t unpacked my bags or told you about my wonderful time down at the hospice in Italy. I came home 2 weeks ago!

But let me tell you, AWL has never been so busy as we are now. It’s generating great stories and fabulous adventures. Let me say, we have the best team ever. We are strong and determined to help more dogs. But, as I always say, we are very humbled to our sponsors and supporters, without you in our team, we cannot even consider to do what we are doing.

 I stayed at one of my wonderful friends and volunteer’s home in Martina’s house. With me I had my daughter Olivia that more or less grew up in the shelters with all the volunteer work we did during our four years in the Naples area.

Saturday morning many fantastic volunteers showed up together with their friends at the Hospice. Some husbands with their children came also. 

Thank you Lori Garcia with family, Valerie Funk with family, Barbarann with family, Sandra Jontz, Martina and Pio. And all the visitors. Sharon Kenney for the very generous donation and dog food, Aaron Kurschner with wife came with dog food, Emily Frazer came with dog food and toys for the Orphan home. And the three painting guys, Ryan and his painting brothers thank you so much.
Two rooms were painted, and we received many donations, too.
It was a lovely day.

It was amazing how much we got cleaned up in the hospice rooms and basement. The purpose was that we should clean up before closing down the hospice in June. The reasons were many!

But in the end I couldn’t fulfill what I had planned. I felt so happy being in there, it was my dream! I thought about all the wonderful clients that despite their disease, their mind was going towards one direction, to get better. They could suffer from great pain, but still their tail was going, thump, thump, thump. 

I had to re-think about having a new structure for operation of the hospice, and listen to the volunteers --- what their strengths and powers were ---- what did they want to do?

Sunday, we drove to our friends, the Caserta girls. They “took over” a Governmental shelter were the dogs more or less starved to death. They are working so hard find homes for their dogs, to not allow any of them to stay in the shelter any longer than necessary.  They are actively working to promote adoptions.

We love to work together with them since they allow us to adopt dogs, or bring them to our hospice. There is a lot of trust and love are between the Caserta Girls and the AWL Team.

We were a big group of 13 adults and children. It was a good opportunity to bring the volunteers with us so they could see one of the “better” shelters in the Campania region. With us, we had 900 kg dog food, some cat food, and cleaning material.

Amy Gardner had done a fantastic job at the Commissary on Base. She had made a cart were people could go and leave a bag of dog/cat food. It had amazing results...

Thank you to everyone on the American Navy Base, you are a wonderful community that helps us to help those in great need.

As always, it was heart breaking to go through the shelter with 304 dogs and 21 cats.  In one section there were five dogs in every cage on a cold concrete floor.  You want to give them all homes. They are adorable.
Many people think the dogs are damaged after being locked in for many years. But not every one is damaged, it’s a very low percent, maybe 3 % need special care.  Their ability to love, even after neglect and abuse, is truly inspiring.

Typical of the stories we hear in Campania, the Government promised to help the Caserta Girls with food for the animals, but it never seemed to happen. It is always, “domani” (tomorrow).

Please if you can start to collect food of any kind of dog or cat food we would be very thankful, and the dogs would be even more thankful. You can also donate money and earmark it “Caserta Food”. We have a good connection with a pet store that also gives us some amount of discount.

We have adopted some shelter dogs to Sweden that are the most warm hearted good dogs I ever met. We like these girls who run the shelter, since they want to help animals and not keep them in cages.

Suddenly Martina called me and pointed at an English Setter laying along the concrete wall now looking up.  Her name is Franka. I saw the love, and I nodded my head as a “yes” to Martina. Franka laid in a section were there was a lot of noise, after only five minutes even I started to feel like I would go crazy from the racket.

Franka had been there since 2005 and before that she came from another shelter. No one saw her, she was invisible!

Franka is now at the hospice with her own room, bed and volunteers that just adore her. What is even more wonderful in this Franka Cinderella story, is that she got her own private sponsor from Texas, The family Michelle & Clinton Gunter.  Since Franka is in very big need of medical help --- as well as dental help --- this is amazing how they came in and offered to help her.

Back at the Hospice, Barbara Ann and her daughter Chloe Rose took Franka to the groomer, and had her bathed and groomed. She looked fantastic and you could see her prancing like a ballet dancer, full of pride.

Her tests came back, showing a high count indicating leichmania, and her kidneys are working hard. Thanks to her guardian angel sponsors, tomorrow we can go and buy special medicine, and food for our Franka. Thank you Team AWL for the great work, I am proud.

That's Amore!

More to come.