• Home Page| About Us| The Refuge| Contact| Dogs and Cats| Links

Other articles

• Help spread the word - we need homes for these beautiful pups!
• Holland trip strengthens international ties
• Goodbye Grisa
• Save the Greyhounds
• Despite everything, we carry on!
• Judge suspends removal of animals
• We will fight on!
• Aina - You Have Failed Us!
• Help us in your weekly shop
• Tribute to Bill Brown
• Please support this charity sale
• End Animal Suffering

Centro Canino's 1st Open Day in 2007

There’s never a dull-moment here at the Centro Canino. We just want to get on with our job of trying to help a few stray abandoned or badly treated dogs and cats but with all the politics and having to deal with a group of people who claim to be neighbours, but actually live many kilometres away and behave like anti-dog jihadists, it’s all go.

So when we heard that a group of our neighbours had decided to hold a Barbeque party against the Centro Canino, we decided to hold an Open Day in the hope that any open-minded decent neighbours may want to come and look around the centre and decide for themselves.

I’m happy to report that more than 150 people came and visited the Centro Canino and that we collected a lot of signatures for our petition for us to be allowed to stay open and help the animals, plus a nice amount of money was raised via cash donations.

More chews for the dogs, that’s what I say!!

Actually most of the money raised has to go towards more basic things such as food, vet care and utility bills. Oh well….

Everyone who visited the Centro Canino for the 1st time (mainly people who live in the neighbourhood but 3-5 kilometres away) seemed very friendly, easy-going and impressed with what we have achieved.

The Neighbourhood organisation, which is against us, had quite a good turn out I have to admit, but they did have a free barbeque and free drinks. I felt quite tempted to go there myself. All we had was tortillas, quiche, crisps and Fanta. Life isn’t fair!

I expect most of the people at the Barbeque were not against the Centro Canino, but keen to have a free night out.

According to a local who came to our Open Day, many of the people at the Barbeque lived in Coll D’en Rebassa, which is over 8km away from us. As one of the mainstays of the Anti-Canino Neighbourhood organisation is that we emit ‘Bad smells’, that proves how ridiculous their argument is.

(A) our dogs are clean. (B) they’re bathed regularly. (C) their kennels are cleaned once or twice a day and (D) before we came along, the place used to be a pig-farm.

Pig-farms smell. Compared to the whiff of pigs, the air around the Centro Canino is as sweet and pure as can be.

A great bunch of children attended our event. They were from S’Aranjassa & contributed to our enjoyment by making lots of lovely drawings of the dogs, for our walls & generally by running around having fun & playing with the dogs.

I had a good look at the organisers of the Neighbourhood organisations’ barbeque and, although I’m reluctant to say this, as we really want to be friends with them sooner or later (and the sooner the better) they looked like a bunch of Mallorcan Victor Meldrews.

Quite funny actually – grumpy with too much time on their hands. I can just imagine them looking bewildered, wringing their hands, rolling their eyes and saying: “They think dogs deserve a decent life, I DON’T BELIEVE IT.”

If the neighbours decide to have another party outside our place, we will too. We’ve also doubled our security presence for the time being. Can’t be too careful. The local police have also promised to patrol the area a little more regularly too, just in case.

Finally, thank-you to everyone who came along, and next time, we’ll try to make everyone a bit more aware of when the next Open Day/evening is, so you can all come along. Thank you.