MERRY CHRITSMAS FROM AWL

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from AWL´s Hospice Cassa dellÁmore in Italy. All our beautiful clients that make us smile and makes us human wish you many blessings this season too.
I want to thank all the wonderful volunteers for all their time and efforts. You, who make the hospice go for our clients to feel secure and safe (with a full stomach.)
Marty, Pio, Chiara, Angy, Jim, Grazia, Sandra. All the volunteers that help drive food donations, drive clients to the veterinarian and you, who help us by fostering dogs.
To all our sponsors, we couldn´t make it without you! You are our biggest help to keep a good standard at the hospice, and to give very sick dogs a humane, eternal sleep. Also your donations help to pay for x-rays so we can udnerstand what is going on inside a client´s body and not have to guess when things are not quite right. And of course the medication to help the very sick getting better, to be able to find them a furever home. And of course our Spay and Neuter Grant project 2011.

To our wonderful veterianarians that with dedicated skill help us understand what is going on with the clients. And their patience with my 100 hundred questions. Dr. Damiani and Dr. Fransesco, thank you so much.

Lega ProAnimale for their Spay and Neuter Foundation; we would never be able to spay and neuter so many dogs without your clinic.

Dr. Vittorio, your kindness to take time and come and visit the hospice and examine all the clients to make sure they are doing fine.
To all the moms and dads that are patiently waiting for their furkid to come home to their furever home, the New Year will reward your patience.

It is some of the hardest work to rescue animals, it sometimes eats your heart up. Enormous hours working 24/7 around the clock, arguing with people to get them to do the right thing, and to feel let down many times. But when you see their eyes when you walk in the door, their tail "thump- thump- thumping" their thankfulness for you only standing in the door...That is Amore!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE--even to the back-stabbers, you make us grow!

A BEAUTIFUL SOUL RIP

A couple of days ago I was down working at our hospice in Southern Italy. My last day, I took some clients with me to Dr Damiani´s clinic. Dr Francesco examined our Amica since she seemed to be in pain. Amica previously had been a very happy stray with her friend outside a food store named CONAD for many years. People knew and fed them and kept an eye on them, too. I remember three years ago when AWL started in Italy, a veterinarian and I stopped to check on them because earlier had I seen a wound on one of the dog´s ears. Suddenly, out from CONAD strode the store manager holding his two arms in his side asking what we are doing? The veterinarian spoke fluent Italian and told him who we were and that we only wanted to make sure the dogs were doing fine. He nodded his head that we could go ahead but he watched every move we made.

The parking guard who watched over the dogs was very friendly. Every time I went in to the store I bought them each one dog pate. We were allowed to feed them if we walked away from the store and fed them at the parking area, he showed me where. These two dogs were chubby; well fed by many and content.

One day after XX months I received a text message from Martina, that the dogcatchers had taken Amica, the older female. Someone had reported she had cancer and had to be removed from the streets. We had to get her back!

I said yes, of course.

Pio drove to the dogcatcher and veterinarian station, and told them about the hospice. We would take care of Amica. If we assured that we would medicate and re-wrap the surgery wound on her leg she could be ours, but we had to come later and show her to them to prove that she was doing better. Pio came to the hospice with Amica and all her medications. Twice a day I wrapped Amica´s leg, it was always a struggle, she was slippery like an eel. But she never did anything to harm us, never growled. She got her own room on the second floor, and it was a victory the day she walked down by herself and out in the grass to do her business.

She was always quiet and beautiful-her squirrel-like eyes always looked at you very intensely and seemed to be questioning if we could be trusted?

Fast forward to the second weekend in December: Dr Francesco examined her and felt big lumps, he could tell she was in discomfort, just as we imagined. X rays were taken and it was with misty eyes I could see, she had big tumors and skeletal cancer. Her time had come to cross the Rainbow Bridge. Even if that is what our hospice is about ---to give them a wonderful time before they start to suffer ---it is always painful to make the decision and to say goodbye.

You need to be a certain kind of person to be able to do this type of work --- to be there when it is time, and make the tough call. But at the same time we are happy that she didn´t have to die under a car on a cold day, suffering. Or, at a dogcatcher’s shelter in a cage on cold concrete floor with a lot of desperate barking around her. Instead, two of her old friends were holding her paw when the eternal sleep was put in. Very calm and no pain, her former street friends were waiting happily for her arrival across the Rainbow Bridge, where the grass is green and lush, and no dogcatchers or concentration-camp/shelters exist. Because That´s Amore.

She will be missed by many, and those who loved and took care of her.

GIVE AND RECIEVE IN CHRISTMAS TIME

Chritsmas Spirit in Italy and Germany Read my column in Swedish Magazine NARA
To be able to give and recieve, is magic, let your Chritsmas spirit glow don´t forget it is about giving. That´s Amore.

For more information about the cheep project in Rexingen visit www.weidegemeinschaft-rexingen.de

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

FOOD DONATION

We got 2 pallets of cat and dog food donation that Michael and Stephen picked up from the SS NAVY and drove unloaded at the hospice.

AWL will drive the food and donate it to 400 dog shelter in Liccola.

Thank you everyone involved That´s Amore.

COLUMN "ALL LOVE TO MAX"

My weekly column in the Magazine NARA is a true story about the dog MAX, left by his family when leaving for America. How he tried to survive on the street not being street smart...but he was smart in another way.

He walked into the American Base and in to the vet clinic, where his medical record was.

I got a phonecall, and this story is about Susy who fostered him, her husband fell in love with him and they adopted him. AWL sponsored neutering and vaccination.

Read the whole story CLICK HERE

BOY SCOUTS HELPING ANIMALS

Picture taken December 2011 16 C Napoli

Thank you
Boy Scout Troop 007 Kyle Baldree's Eagle Project
NSA Support Site, Gricignano
Scott McClure--Scoutmaster. It was a pleasure to meet you all, you made a great face lift at AWL´s Hopsice (garden work)

It was with pleasure I returned down to Italy briefly, to the hospice to meet up with all the clients. On Saturday morning, the Scouts came and Kyle was in charge for a project helping AWL´s hospice. Weeks before on a Sunday, he and his fellow scouts had bagged in the store at Support Site, collecting $900 dollars that he later used to buy material for his planned project at the hospice.

They were a nice goup of approximatelz 10; between 10-55 years of the age.

The clients were happy to get so much attention and the garden got a nice uplift. Half the fence was painted, a new big metal shelf was brought up. And we got dog food too. They worked and cleaned very nicely the whole day, old things were thrown away.

It was a loving --- and cleaning--- Amore day.

BACK ON TRACK

We are sorry for the long silence. Moving office from one country to another country is wonderful new experiences but also a lot of challenges.

With a new language you don´t master it is even worse. But thanks to new fantastic German friends, Mr Jurgen and his wife Anita and friend Isabell they made it possible. THANK YOU!

A lot of things to update...stay tuned.