Save homeless puppies from Parvovirus

Parvovirus is every shelter’s nightmare. Life in a shelter is already unbearably hard, with daily incoming animals, hurt and sick abandoned dogs, and then when a shelter is hit with merciless Parvovirus, life becomes hell on Earth, watching all the animals you love, struggle for their lives.

Parvovirus is a contagious virus that mainly affects dogs and cats, and it spreads from dog to dog by contact with infected dogs feces. In a shelter’s restricted space, where dogs are forced to live all together in very small spaces, if the virus manages to come in, with a new incoming dog, then it’s very hard to get and keep it under control.

Most of vaccined, healthy adult dogs are resistant to parvovirus, but the groups of dogs most in danger are puppies, unvaccinated adults, elderly and sick dogs.

In November 2024, when Parvovirus was identified in the shelter, we had a big influx of puppies and new unvaccinated dogs at the time. Even though the spreading of the virus was contained to 2 enclosed areas, most dogs, including a lot of puppies, were infected with the virus, as the virus broke off in an area of new incoming arrivals - meaning hurt abandoned dogs, neglected dogs without any vaccinations, dumped puppies.

Parvovirus hides in a dog for days up to weeks and then suddenly symptoms break out, in some cases so violently that very vulnerable dogs can go into critical states in hours, in a day. They start vomiting, and having severe diarrhea, which causes terrible de-hydrating, that again causes organs to start failing. The patients become lethargic, they no longer eat, and the get fever. All of this leads to very fast weight loss and a weak immune system. It’s a fast and violent downward spiral.

Our shelter veterinary team set up an emergency clinic, which filled up with almost 20 dogs in a matter of 2 days. However, a shelter has very very limited medical equipment for such situations, and when the shelters vet team together with wonderful medical volunteers saw any of the patients getting terribly worse, then we were at a crossroad - let the dog stay in the shelter and very probably accept the animals death, or transport the dog to an animal hospital with 24/7 attendance and proper medical equipment. Parvovirus mostly needs veterinary hospitalization for any chance of survival.

The Government of Spain does not provide the shelter with any medical assistance, let alone offer financing for the purchase of much needed medical equipment, or a Veterinary Centre where the homeless animals of Spain can get veterinary assistance. Neither do they help with covering any medical invoices, so us as a shelter end up with massive debts, that we’re unable to pay: 15.000€ is the still unpaid cost of Parvo Crisis 24/25 (with the total reaching almost 18.000€)

We cannot let precious puppies die in agony and pain, of course we must send them to hospital, but now we need everyone’s help, to cover their medical costs, the SOS Malaga clinic will also be able to receive emergencies from Triple A Marbella in the future…..