Helping Homeless Pets and Chained Dogs

This GoFundMe page was created to save Safars' Boneless Project, a pet food bank and feral cat rescue. Too many animals depend on the food donated by this project and due to Covid-19 their shelves are almost empty.

We need the community help; we need your help! 

For the last eight years the Boneless Project has been feeding the dogs and cats from homeless pet owners, chained dogs and feral cats.  

Last week, the project's volunteers were already delivering pet food and other supplies to the pet owners now living in the downtown hotels. 

With tears in our eyes, we saw the happy faces of elderly and young women and men smiling for the first time. The past trace of sadness and suffering marking their faces seems to have been replaced by beauty. 

After experiencing such a positive outcome we are now more determined than ever to keep doing our part in this collective effort. Because we know that pet food is not accessible for the street community. 

The Boneless Project already feeds and monthly helps:

* eight large dogs that belong to a large group of ex-homeless youth and others to disabled families
* five chained large dogs
* sixty cats from our five feral cat colonies and foster homes. 
* five emergency cases per month from people experiencing temporary need

To our regular food beneficiaries we now need to add approximately twenty-five new dogs from the hotels. Following is the list of things we always need for downtown in addition to the essential kibble, cans, bones, treats, and toys such as:

* harness, collars and leashes for large and extra large dogs,
* warm impermeable winter rain coats for large and extra large dogs,
* flea medication for large and extra large dogs and cats, and
* financial help to take the animals to the vet when they are ill or,
* to offer spay and neuter for them to the owners.

For the last eight years and a half we have always been there for the struggling pet owners in need. We are reliable, serious and knowledgeable. The fact that we ran our pet food bank from inside the emergency shelters and that we also roamed the streets for several years, including all the tent cities, gave us vast experience. 

Experience, reliability, compassion, and impartiality count on this domain
It is a blessing for us to provide this service, but we cannot do it without your help. We do our part with passion and dedication, but these poor innocent animals need us all to keep them healthy and safe.

For example, at this moment, the Mastiff mix with Argentinian Dogo called, Bronx, in one of the pictures, which is a real teddy bear, urgently needs a very strong extra large harness. Unfortunately, we were not able to buy him one because they cost like $100.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for supporting our causes!
We cannot do what we do without animal lovers like you!

Please, support the stores that regularly help us. These are the stores where you can drop pet food donations or coins in our bins or coinboxes:

* Creature Pet Store, Bay St and Blanshard St. (pet food bin and coinbox)
* Kay's Korner - Antique Store - 337 Cook St. (coinbox)
* Paws on Cook, 359 Cook St (pet food bin)
* Mr. Pet's, Tillicum Mall (pet food bin and coinbox)
* Wiskers & Waggs, 6703 West Coast Rd, Sooke (pet food bin)
* Village Food Markets, 6661 Sooke Rd

OUR STORY

Our group was registered on February 5th, 2012, to help the animals and low income pet owners in the town of Sooke, but

* in 2013 we expanded our services to Victoria.

* At the end of 2013, we created the first pet food bank and ran it out of Our Place Society, OPS.

* At the end of 2014, we moved the pet food bank from OPS to Victoria Cool Aid Society's Rock Bay Landing emergency shelter.

* In 2014, we initiated a third pet food bank in Salvation Army's Stan Haggen Center for Families.

During all these years we realized that the pet owners who are homeless do not usually like to sleep in the emergency shelter's lobbies. Their dogs can easily become targets creating problems to the owner and to the animal.

* So, from the end of 2017 to today, already knowing the vast majority of homeless pet owners in Victoria, we decided to serve them directly. Nowadays, they message us on FB or text us when they need us and we go meet them.

* In 2018, we added a new program to help dogs that spend their lives tied up to chains. We knocked at doors and requested permission to help the family's pet with: dog houses, food, bones, treats, toys, collars, harness, bowls, and straw for their houses. The fact that we are humble and that we never judge opened many doors to us.

The chained dogs program is extremely hard. There are days where we arrive home with our hearts broken in thousand pieces.

* From 2012 to today, we have rescued, spayed and neutered seven hundred feral and stray cats. We found homes for all the ones we were able to rehabilitate. We placed the most difficult ones in farms and we look after five colonies of feral who had nowhere to go.


SAFARS
Our mailing address: PO Box 344 Sooke, BC V9Z 1G1