LISN Dog Rescue

In Oct 2022 I went on holiday to St Lucia. First thing, with jet lag, on the first morning of the holiday Alan and I went for a walk. We had not been on the beach for more than a minute when we saw an emaciated little dog, covered in blood limping towards us nervously wagging the tip of her tail, begging for food. I had nothing for her but went back after breakfast with some sausages, ham and bacon!

As she was so thin, I gave her several small feeds a day. I was told by a couple of locals on the beach that she had been around the beach for some time and was deteriorating. Unfortunately, many people in St Lucia consider the massive stray population of dogs and cats as vermin and they suffer terrible cruelty to add to the starvation, of which so many die, as well as disease.

I tried to contact the 2 rescues centres in St Lucia to see if they could help the poor little dog, but they were both overfull and desperately lacking funds. I befriended one of the guards on the beach and asked her to get me a huge bag of dog food because I was starting to worry what was going to happen to Little One, which is the name I had started to call her when I returned to England. For a couple of nights, I couldn't sleep because I knew that Little One had many more issues than just malnutrition, and if I left her, she was going to die.

So the next morning I went to the hotel manager and said I wanted to take her to the vet. He said they would "deal" with her. He called the "pest control man" who came to catch her. He couldn't get near her, but she came for me. He said he would "deal" with her for me and I could carry on with my holiday. I said that was not going to be how it went and I insisted he took me and Little One to the vets. On reflection this was rather a foolish thing to do, as once out of the security of our all-inclusive hotel I felt quite nervous. Driving through the backstreets of Castries was quite a shock with people and animals living in extreme poverty.

We arrived at a house and the vets was "round the back". Certainly not the sort of vet practice I am used to but it was this or nothing. The vet was not there but I spoke with her on the phone, left Little One there and the pest control man kindly took me back to the hotel. I then began to think, whatever have I done......!

Not until the following day could I get through to the vet and by then I had decided I wanted to take Little One back to England. So, then I had to research how to do this and called all my friends in England to try and help me. The paperwork was endless and Little One had to have lots of tests, vaccinations etc etc as well as improve condition to survive the 9-hour flight. It was proving to be almost impossible and with the help of Lisa that I met in our hotel, we investigated the easier and considerably less expensive option of sending Little One to the US where Lisa comes from. Two more days and again after a sleepless night I started the next day determined to get Little One to the UK. She was starting to improve dramatically at the vets, I had been to see her, and she was so pleased to see me, particularly as I had some sausages with me!! Finally, I found a man who had rescued some cats from St Lucia and knew how to do the paperwork. Hooray, I had found a way forward......

I had one more day to go and visit "my new dog" and then came home. Little One then stayed at the vets for a further 4 weeks. The paperwork was done, I handed over several thousand pounds and prayed I'd done it all correctly, and on 29 Nov 2022 she flew from St Lucia to Gatwick. I went down to stay overnight in the area with a friend to make sure I was there in good time. Another sleepless night panicking, would she arrive, would she get through the state vet check both in St Lucia and here. Would she be able to adapt to being a house dog when she had been a street/beach dog all her life, and what would Alan think as I had promised him to have a break from rescuing dogs so we could travel. (I have rescued several Dobermans over the years). We waited several hours after the flight landed and I began to wonder if she had been on it at all.

Eventually she came through and I burst into tears. It had been a 6-week struggle to rescue her, but she was finally in the UK! At this point I must thank the army of people involved with Little Ones rescue, I couldn't have done it on my own. She was very worried to start with, but as soon as she saw me, I gave her a sausage and she wagged her tail excitedly!

She has been amazing from the start, the happiest most grateful dog I could ever wish to meet, and I know that without my help, by now, she would have died a slow miserable death like so many of her relatives and friends.... She is now called Lucia, after her country.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about all Lucias friends and relatives - she has obviously had puppies, probably several times, and I have decided that rather than think about it I am going to do something about it. I told my friend Lisa this, in one of our chats and she agreed that together we can do this.

So now we have started LISN DOG RESCUE. .((Lucia's Island Spay Neuter Dog Rescue))

There are literally thousands of dogs on the Island suffering from starvation, disease and cruelty and they are breeding uncontrollably. One bitch can produce 50,000 more dogs through her children, grandchildren etc etc

We believe that the best use of our resources is to spay and neuter as many of these dogs as possible to try and stem the population explosion. Then the tiny amount of food they manage to get can be used to keep them going not their numerous offspring.

We will also try and rescue as many of the desperately ill dogs as we can.

So far, using our own money we have exported 10 rescue dogs and had 8 spay/neuters performed but we urgently need to expand and that relies on funds from other people as well. Just recently a handful of amazing people have generously given to our cause. PLEASE PLEASE can you join them and help us save another dog and another dog and another dog? Anything you can give will be so appreciated and every single pound will go directly to the dogs and nowhere else. We are passionate about this, and we will never give up.