Closing the petition

This petition closes shortly and we want to thank our supporters once more and remember what the goal has been and what we have reached during the long time the petition has accompanied us. It opened 02/19/2013 with the goal to fight/end the regular mass poisonings at Caribbean beaches and vacation spots, focusing especially on the Dominican Republic. It was also the beginning of our program Tourism and Animal welfare that informs tourists and offers hotels and communities spay neuter for strays followed by a feeding/monitoring/care program  at officially accepted feeding places as an alternative to mass poisonings. In the beginning we received some support from TUI who recommended their hotels to cooperate with us but when the hotels didn’t respond TUI didn’t want to engage in this any further. Then began a project in Punta Cana where the highest concentration of All Inclusives is found that should have benefitted hotel cats and beach dogs but the cooperation with the only local animal welfare organization Rescatame didn’t work out in the long run and ended in November 2017 when we saw ourselves forced to close the project. Only a few weeks later our project Boca Chica started with Cat Lovers RD, caused by a cry for help from tourists complaining about dog abuse at the beach by the security of their hotel. Since then we run a big annual spay neuter clinic Boca Chica where officials and business people regard animal welfare efforts very favorably so that it would be possible to run a feeding and medicare program for strays there besides our clinics. The permits have been passed, the station was built but at the moment the necessary helpers and the financial means lack to put the program into practice. Even though, the number of beach dogs has been reduced approximately by half since the clinics started; without poisonings.. 2017 we coordinated our petition with the Dominican petition of Alexandra Morillo that had the goal of improving the enforcement of the Dominican animal welfare law Ley 248-12 which forbids animal poisonings, therefore having a similar goal as we. Alexandra Morillo‘s petition had only a few thousand signatures at the time but combined with ours she could hand over 42.259 signatures to the government on 05/16/2018. The government’s reaction - none! Alexandra Morillo founded the head organization  PAPROMAAN which many Dominican animal welfare organizations joined in order to try to enforce Ley 248-12 better regionally, in communities in cooperation with mayors, officials, police. We kept the petition open in order to offer them international support in case needed but this necessity doesn’t seem to exist and so we think that now the time has come to finally close the petition. Our greatest success was and remains our work with the tourists themselves. The times when we were contacted with a plea to save an animal seen weeks ago somewhere during the vacation belong to the past. Nowadays people contact us from their vacation spot when help can still be given and the number of rescued animals has risen accordingly. And there are other signs of progress: tourists ask before their journey for animal friendly hotels or what they can take along to help the local animal welfare organization and we feel that there is a better understanding that certain behavior rather endangers the animals instead of helping them; like feeding them near restaurants, hotels or the beach. Our siteshttp://www.kreolischerhund.de/TierschutzundTourismus.en.php  http://www.kreolischerhund.de/Hotels.en.php  ,and http://www.kreolischerhund.de/TierschutzadressenKaribikVerzeichnis.en.php  will be updated during the coming months and we offer our personal support to every tourist who finds an animal in the Caribbean during his vacation that he wants to rescue. As far as animal-friendly hotels are concerned we have undergone a learning process in the recent years and do not recommend All Inclusive run by constantly changing managements but rather smaller hotels run by their owners. The only exception are the Sandal hotels but this chain is run by its owner. Making it clear to the tourist company when booking the holidays that one wants an animal-friendly hotel is another possibility to teach this industry what customers want. Concerning animal welfare addresses, we are observing a growing number of groups and initiatives on many islands, often not yet registered as associations but with only a site on Facebook or Instagram. We have decided to list them too on our site because we have noticed that at times these groups or private initiatives are quicker in rendering help than more established and less flexible organizations and time counts when rescuing an animal. The update could take months… It is also advisable to go to Google and enter animal recue or dogs and cats rescue and the name of the island if one seeks help – you might be surprised! We are always grateful when tourists send us information about the experiences they made during their holidays.  Don’t look away – act! And please continue to support our mission to improve the life of animals in holiday paradises! We wish you a wonderful vacation after Corona!