Mayan Families "Hope for the Animals" is heartened by the recent actions of the U.S. Senate

Mayan Families "Hope for the Animals" is heartened by the recent actions of the U.S. Senate to pass two important pieces of animal legislation. Both of these measures now go to the House of Representatives.
 The Animal Fighting Spectator Prohibition Act (US S 1947/ H.R. 2492) would make it a federal offense to attend an organized animal fight and increases the penalties for bringing a minor to a fight. People who watch these cruel exhibitions and encourage children to attend should be severely penalized.
The Senate also passed an amendment to the Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2013 Military Activities (S. 3254), allowing the Secretary of Defense to establish and maintain a system to provide for the veterinary care of retired military working dogs. Dogs who have served America in the military should be rewarded for protecting our service men and women, not discarded like unneeded equipment. After their tour of duty is over, these heroic dogs should be eligible for veterinary care.

Two Cute Little Faces

This little puppy was dropped off at our door yesterday. She is only about three weeks old.Our daughter, Aleeya has become her surrogate mother. Our older daughter, Zoe called her Chocolat.Chocolat will be spayed, vaccinated and we hope we can find a loving home for her.Dogs can be shipped to the U.S, there is no quarrantine but the dogs do have to have all their vaccinations and paperwork.If you would like to have this cute puppy in your house, we would love to send her!Please consider sponsoring a dog to be spayed so that we can reduce the number of unwanted animals and the suffering that they endure.

The Guatemalan September Animal Clinic

These adorable faces below were also very anxious but they are now all doing well.
They are in a big fenced area that we have for puppies. We have homes for three of these little puppies when they are bigger. We need to spay and neuter them, there are four girls and one boy. There were two other puppies but we couldn't find them.

The mother dog was very worried about her puppies and were they were going.

We unfortunately, were not able to get the mother dog to spay. She is a street dog and doesn't trust people and was not going to let herself be captured.

This is the new community of Xecotoj. It is a housing community that was built by the govt. for people who lost their homes in Hurricane Stan in 2005.

Saturday 26th we had our monthly spay and neuter clinic to reduce the population of unwanted animals here in the Solola area of Guatemala.

Here Mayan Families employees are helping collect animals from houses that have asked to have their dogs spayed or neutered.
Jonathon below is a sponsored Mayan Families student who is in our skills program.
He is very involved with the animals and helps run the monthly spay and neuter clinics.
Here he is collecting unwanted puppies from Xecotoj. The mother dog had the puppies and they are now just running around the streets.

Maria is the mother of one of our sponsored students....Maria is a single mother who loves her two dogs but could never afford to have them spayed without the help of Mayan Families.
This is her second dog that she has had spayed and she is so happy that now she will not have a horde of male dogs coming into her yard and will not have puppies that she cannot afford to feed.

We had several cats come along to be operated. Some come in bags and some come in boxes!

Pedro who is the Mayan Families Tuk Tuk driver is a new convert to having an animal spayed. He brought his cousin's dog from San Marcos , a village on the lake, he then took him home and is caring for him for two days before the dog takes the boat trip back to the village. Pedro also adopted a cat this week.

This young girl brought her two puppies to be spayed and neutered.

This woman is a widow and now a single mother, she is so happy to have her dog spayed. She loves her dog but she could not afford to have this operation nor could she feed more puppies.

Rosa, who volunteers with Mayan Families for the animal project, Hope for the Animals, brought several widows with their dogs. Rosa talks to many people in the community and encourages them to spay and neuter their animals. Rosa also feeds many stray street dogs and brings them for medical care when needed. She recently brought a dog in that had been run over and was screaming in pain. Unfortunately, we had to put him down his back legs had been severely injured and he would not be able to walk again. If it had not been for Rosa, he probably would have laid in the street for several days in terrible pain before he died.

This other woman who is another animal lover, shared with us the horrific story of her neighbors who buried new born puppies alive. She talked to the young boy who had buried the puppies and tried to explain to him that this was not the right thing to do. The family has moved away from the village or else we would have sent Helen, our project manager to talk to them and explain that this kind of treatment of animals is against the law and that they could be fined. Admittedly, it is a very tiny fine but at least they will know that there could be some repurcussions

Bassett hound.

Yesterday, we rescued a 4 yr old male Bassett Hound that had been in a cage that was too small for him to turn around. He had been in this cage for more than 2 months.
He was in a pet store in Chimalatenango. His cage had two other wire cages above him full of dogs . All the urine and feces came down on top of him.

Unfortunately, we had to purchase this dog to get him out of such a horrible situation. Not something that we like to do but several people were able to put in money to rescue him and we found him a good home to go to.

We have had an animal activist group go to the pet store, they took photos and they are now hoping that they will be able to take some legal action against the pet store.

We are also picking up three kittens from this store, nobody wants them and we at least will be able to spay and neuter them before we find homes for them.

Our next spay and neuter clinic will be held on the last Saturday of this month, August 29th.
We hope to be able to spay and neuter at least 35 dogs and cats. Please help us with even the smallest donation, it will make a great difference to be able to keep this program running.

It is the only action we can take to help relieve the suffering of the animals here. This and education but education will take some time. We are working on that. Every week we are holding Humane Education classes in the schools. But we need to be able to take immediate action to help the enormous suffering of the animals here. Spaying and neutering is an immediate solution to reduce the overpopulation of animals.