Let's Adopt is watching. A wake-up call.

Before you start reading let me tell you this post will raise a storm amongst the Turkish animal welfare community. If by the time you have finished reading you relate to it please forward it to all animal lovers you may have on your friendslist.

Why is this post important? Because it marks the beginning of a new system. Because it is the proof that the current adoption systems in Turkish shelters doesn’t work. Its a sham. A number of people in those shelters, far from being animal lovers they have just become glorified hoarders, and people for whom animal protection is nothing but a power game, a game of control over the lives of innocent animals.

When Let’s Adopt was founded two years ago it was our intention to help the different shelters in Istanbul to rehome their animals in desperate need. However, it soon became obvious that this would not be possible. Let’s Adopt introduced a new system, a completely different set of values, a challenge of the status quo, and the old guard, the volonteers that treated those poor animals in shelters like their own “prisoners of war” didn’t like it. Every time we offered our help in rehoming three legged animals, blind animals, dogs and cats in desperate situation our offers of help were refused. Reasons? God only knows… No matter how much we tried to show them our completely transparent system those people wouldnt listen… and at times they even became violent.

We then changed our approach.

For the last 2 years volunteers of Let’s Adopt have been visiting Istanbul’s shelters and rescuing dogs in desperate condition. You can watch some of them in the following link, there are many many more. Those dogs were inmediately taken to our approved clinics for emergency treatments, in many cases they were in need of surgeries, in the case of broken bones they were sometimes flown to Europe for life saving operations.  The vast majority of cases though those dogs were rehomed amongst our closest volonteers, a very special group of people who would do anything to save a life. I wont mention any names, they all know who they are, the list would be too long anyway….

We have rescued scores of dogs from shelters like Uskudar (run by Asude Ustaoglu), Gurpinar (Sema Mandev), and many many others, Izmir, Ankara, Bolu, Adana… special pleasure it gives us every time we rescue a dog from the infamous Haykod shelter in Ankara. Each and everyone of those animals lives a perfect life in a perfect home in Istanbul, surrounded by REAL animal lovers, not just glorified hoarders in search of some sense to their lifes.

We never said anything about those rescues… why? Because we focussed on saving animals and in showing others how to do so.

We would like to give four pieces of advice to the volunteers of those shelters, specially those in charge of adoptions:

1. The single most important factor for the success of an adoption is NOT the proof of address, it is the character of the adoptant. In other words, before you give a dog to anyone make sure that person understands what it is to have a dog. This sounds like simple advice. The vast majority of cases those adoption “officers” are the worst evaluators of character we have ever met.

2. You have a sacred responsibility to improve the health conditions of the animals under your care. Fulfill it. You would be shocked at the amount of animals with Parvo we have rescued from those abject shelters. We managed to save all of them thanks to having at our disposal the most advanced treatments available, and when they were not available we imported them from overseas, regardless of the cost. Countless lives have been saved this way.

3. NEVER give dogs to people who plan to use them as security guards or to hunters. Those animals end up paying your decision with their lives.

Finally…

4. Accept offers of help from organizations such as ours. The unfortunate animals that fell under your care do not belong to you. Your obligation is to protect them. The moment you fail to fulfill that obligation it is your moral responsibility to accept help from others.

Please click on this link and you will have the before and after of a few of the animals we have been refering in this article. Those pictures are proof that the system on those shelters doesnt work and needs serious improvement. Our suggestion to the management of those shelters would be to inmediately reorganize their rehoming procedures and to check on the current state of the animals they gave in adoption. They are up for a surprise, as we are convinced a great number of those animals have been left in other shelters, or worst.

Finally,and very important, Let’s Adopt could not perform its life saving operations without the assistance of our volonteers. To them I must humbly thank for their support whilst encouraging all our other members to get involved in our work not only by asking for help but by offering your help to us.

In the hope that one day, “animal lovers” involved in shelter work start acting as such instead of “jail masters”…

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Sorry for the long email, please forward this to everybody on your contact list.

Viktor Larkhill