The Tunisian Pup Gang Rescue Mission

Hello, I'm Sara and I'm fundraising to save 6 abandoned puppies I found during my summer beach holidays in Tunisia this July.

(The puppies aged 4.5 months in September 2024)

Here are 4 of them after I had taken care of them in August this summer:

This is my story, and I hope to find glimpses of humanity across the online world to help me in this puppy rescue mission.

For the record, there were 7 puppies I found. One of them died after being really sick, and 2 others were supposed to be adopted by a local farmer. After discovering the farmer's neglectful practices and lack of care for his own dogs, I have decided to bring all 6 puppies back to Europe.

Why do you want to rescue these puppies?

You can read below the full story on how I found the puppies and what led me to the decision to try to save them, after going through a lot to get them to a temporary safe place.

Long story short, I found those puppies on day 1 of my holiday trip. Since then I saw too much in the country to understand that if I leave them there, their fate is sealed to either die shot by city workers & hunters or abused and chained to a tree under scorching heat.

The funds I need will be used to vaccinate them and prepare them for complying with the European Union entry requirements for bringing dogs into Europe. The ultimate goal is for them to find their adoption families by the end of this year and have all the love and care needed.

I am working with the French association Patounes SansFrontières to help me find them a home for each of them across Europe, whether it would be in France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, or any other countries in the EU + EEA.

Who I am & why this rescue mission is important to me

My name is Sara, I live and work in Brussels. Until this summer, I always considered myself to be a cat person and overall an animal lover but that was about it. From day 1 of my arrival in Tunisia, I however felt very uneasy discovering stray dogs & cats in the street who were looking absolutely emaciated and scared of everything, and on my second day I found the puppies and I just could not leave them in such a terrible place and starved.

This mission is important to me. Despite being overwhelmed by the animal abuse and overall situation in Tunisia, I want to contribute in small ways to helping at least a few of those dogs who greatly suffer there. After all the challenges they survived (their mother poisoned, them being left in a bag on a highway probably left to die, starved and sick, and one of them unfortunately dying because of human ignorance), leaving them to their fate would mean failing those puppies.

It has been very challenging to keep them alive, and I thought multiple times of giving up due to the hostile environment I found myself in. While they haven't had any chances yet, I want to make sure these puppies will have their lives changed for the best.

What is is like in Tunisia for stray dogs?

Similar to recent legislation passed in Turkey , the government in Tunisia has passed laws and implemented them swiftly to hunt stray dogs (and sometime pet dogs mistakenly) and shoots them en masse to reduce the population, with no sterilisation campaign in place. Due to the disastrous situation, no association across the country and in Europe could effectively help. For example, the Brigitte Bardot foundation told me they couldn't help due to the government's roadblock against international animal rescue NGOs. To this day there are no international animal rescue NGOs on the ground, nor publicly funded local shelter and associations.

I know I can only do this with your support. Every contribution will have a tangible impact on the lives of this puppy gang, and every little helps.

At this stage, I can only appeal to your humanity and believe there are people out there who understand & care, just like I found some people across this journey who helped me put these puppies into a safe place. Not everything is bad in this world, and I hope love can win.

How will the funds be used?

The total cost is 2760 EUR for the EU health entry requirements & transport.

Here is the cost breakdown (EUR) for the 6 dogs:

TOTAL: 2760 EUR

In addition, as our own financial contribution to the rescue mission, me & my sister are personally covering the following costs:

The Go Fund me transaction fees (2.9% + 0.25 EUR per donation - see Belgium example )

What is the full story of how you found them?

On my day of arrival after checking into my holiday rental in Hammamet, I walked outside to get some fresh air and walked past some semi-constructed building. This is when I saw a bunch of puppy heads popping out of the building and barking towards me. I went inside the building and found 7 of them starved & playing among rubble and dirt. I asked local residents how come they were stuck there and I was told that their mother, after giving birth, was poisoned and the puppies were put in a bag on the highway until one of the local residents, a school professor who was passing by the highway, found them and put them in this abandoned building to avoid them being crushed. Locals weren't able to feed them or care for them as they themselves were struggling sometimes to feed themselves, so only the kids of the area occasionally came to feed them a handful of pasta or couscous if they had any leftovers.

I went to feed them everyday but it was a very hostile environment due to the difficult conditions and the abuse towards stray dogs in Tunisia I discovered during my stay. Every street I walked by, there were dozens of dogs and cats, only skin and bones, with open wounds and tails cut or broken paws, while a lot of the remaining dogs were chained to trees under the scorching heat (45℃ or around 113 Fahrenheit) with no food nor water, barking all night, which prevented me from sleeping. I will spare you the photos & videos I took of them (during my stay I was also trying to help with a vet to see if some urgent health issues could be fixed for other strays) because it is too heartbreaking.

One night while drying laundry with my mum on the terrace of the residence, I saw some guys with guns who came to the landfill area where adult stray dogs were often hanging as some bins were left there and along other tourists, I went to feed them from time to time. On that night, they shot them in front of me and my mum (and other tourists) and to this day I am very still in shock by the brutality of it.

I was so scared for the puppies as they were not far but gladly the gunned guys didn't go towards the building. On that night, I started searching for a solution by reaching out to associations, vets, volunteers and did some research to know more about what happened with the killings.

I found out about the government's long-running practice of killing stray dogs to reduce the population, with local authorities and city workers collaborating with hunters to track down the dogs. There is indeed an overpopulation of dogs and cats as there is no sterilisation campaign ongoing. And it's not even village mutts and mixed breed dogs that I saw on the street, but a lot of dog breeds such as poodles, huskies, shepherds and labradors as a lot of pet owners often abandon them on the street if they can't afford them anymore.

Every associations, shelters and volunteers across the country I had reached out couldn't take the puppies, as they were themselves overwhelmed by the situation and with no public funding support and a hostile environment from authorities and locals against protecting strays lives. At this point I was in another airbnb but quite far from the place where the puppies where, so I was going there every morning and evening to feed them, clean the filthy area, play with them, and give them antibiotics after a visit to the vet (which was also a very challenging journey to bring them all 7 in a taxi as no one wanted to take them).

During my 2,5 week holidays, I did my best to give them health care and feed them, until after some other challenging experiences, they reached safety in Le Kef region which is in the northwest region of Tunisia near Algeria and is more rural and 'animal-friendly' than in the coastal towns due to the presence of farms and agriculture. The puppies are taken care of by a temporary carer and they are doing much better since, but time is pressing to get them adopted otherwise they risk ending up in the street again and left to fend for themselves.

Here are some videos of how I found the puppies and the journey across Tunisia to find a safe place (I will try to add them regularly):

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_oPwxV5kYkbTGgEanX-Zkw

They are 2 male and 4 females for adoption and they are all vaccinated against the main dog diseases and rabies, and will be ready to travel to Europe by mid-January 2025.

When I found the puppies this summer:

The puppies today (September 2024)

I will post on Twitter to shed some additional light on the puppies, their stories and how they are doing much better today, and in the meantime you can follow the rescue mission on the following social media channels:

Facebook: https://shorturl.at/9H3Z5

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_tunisian_pup_gang/

Twitter / X: https://x.com/TheTNSPupGang

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and let's hope that one day animal suffering will be a thing of the past.