DogsnHomes Rescue, a UK charity, is proud to be working in partnership with US non-profit Ukrainian War Animals Relief Fund (ARF) to help companion animals in Ukraine.
Nearly seven million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022 and at least 30% of Ukrainians have been forced to leave their pets behind. This means unprecedented numbers of abandoned dogs and cats are now wandering the dangerous streets without homes.
DogsnHomes Rescue has already delivered 40 tonnes of aid via several missions since the war began. It is now arranging to deliver over 20 tonnes of donated food and supplies for dogs and cats to a warehouse on the Polish-Ukrainian border.
Shortly after this has arrived in Poland, a volunteer from DogsnHomes Rescue will travel to the warehouse and meet the ARF team before the aid is taken into Ukraine. ARF has assembled an impressive team of vets and vet nurses from around the world including volunteers from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Mexico, the UK and many European countries.
With a unique approach, ARF, founded by US Dot Com serial tech entrepreneur Dan Fine, is building a web portal for warehouses, drivers and shelters to use. This allows shelters to catalogue animals in their care and request food, medicines and supplies, while providing drivers the opportunity to verify their requests prior to fulfilling them. The concept is to streamline aid for companion animals by connecting aid workers together and creating the nation’s most comprehensive database of abandoned pets in over 1,000 shelters.
The DogsnHomes Rescue and ARF partnership has a far reaching vision. In addition to delivering aid, the team will be visiting shelters containing thousands of abandoned and stray cats and dogs. The aim is to spay and neuter 500 animals over two weeks initially, to prevent a surge of unwanted pregnancies.
In addition to being spayed or neutered, all the animals will be photographed and micro chipped, with their details added to the portal. This database will enable the animals to be reunited with their owners as families return or rehomed.
“We are proud partners of ARF and are delighted to be working in collaboration with them,” said Gary Baxter, Co-founder of DogsnHomes Rescue. “Working together as a team enables us not only to deliver aid for dogs and cats on the largest scale we have to date, but also to assist ARF in establishing their first mobile spay and neuter clinic and data capture for the portal.”
“We know that many Ukrainians had no choice but to either let their dog or cat loose at the station or try to find a nearby shelter that was open, overcrowded and understaffed”, says Dan Fine, Founder of ARF. “We were wondering what we could do to help these innocent animals, so we put our heads together and formulated ARF.”
