This week

We have just spent four and a half days without Internet or telephone, so only now can we blog. First news is last Friday Mom and Dad finally found some where to live in Nova Friburgo. The doctor will be taking over our home at the end of the month, so they have to move quick. The house is simple and has enough land around it to support the our needs. They will have to fence an area for us to play as there is not a wall around the property. Mom is going to try and raise funds to get us on our way and has  managed with one donation to put the required deposit down to secure the house. Here is a picture of it. Mom is happy to have found somewhere,but sad to lose her home. Still!  it had to come sometime and the eleven month wait to sell the home ate up all the equity. So, poor mom and dad got nothing out of it. Mom says she got to save her babies,  so she isn't crying. We are all going to the new place too. We will have small temporary kennels until they can sort something out for us.

It will be a lot colder there as it is a lot higher up at around 3300 feet above sea level. Mom has to somehow get eight wooden dog houses for us. She has five,but the rest of us have brick built in houses or sleep in the house. It will take two trips to move us. First trip with furniture and our stuff then a second with us all. It will be quite an operation. Please,  if anyone can help Mom and Dad with the huge cost of removals then they would be very grateful and so would we otherwisw we won't be moving far.

The second piece of news is that the film about the disaster shelter opened by Mom and Dad's good friends in Teresopolis has won first prize. Bebete who opened the shelter as a response to the terrible natural disaster all around this region is very happy and Flavia who made the film is also very happy. They said Nicki appeared in the film more than any other dog and Dad is in many parts of the 70 minute film about Estimacao (the non profit). They called mom and dad from Curitiba where the first public showing of the film was and said it was really emotional. They all cried and so would mom if she had been able to go and see it. It will be shown in Rio next  then   Manaus and some other places. Mom will see it in Rio. Apparently the number of animal rescues achieved by Estimacao and with us helping almost daily is the largest number of any rescues for any one group during a disaster. We are all very proud and emotional about it. We thought and talked a lot about it at the weekend. Mom has hundreds and hundreds of photos of what happened and what we all did to help in Teresopolis. There were some very emotional and sad moments and some very happy ones. Bebete, Flavia, and  all  of  us now have become inextricably linked due to this disaster. When you go through something like this you aways remember your comrades,or so mom says. So,  the film will eventually have sub titles and go out to the English speaking world. Maybe it will be famous who knows? Winning the award in Curitiba was a real good sign.

As soon as Mom, Dad and us are settled and unpacked Mom says she will collect the Spinning dog and bring him to his new home and see if they can help him. She has told us all to be nice to him because he has special problems.

Mom and Dad are hoping to be able to complete their own registration for a registered charity very soon now. Somebody has promised to pay for this so that we can continue being a shelter and helping special dogs with special needs. The have ambitions to grow and one day run a spay and neuter programme and vaccination programmes too. Their statute would allow them to rescue wild life too. Mom and Dad missed a beautiful opportunity last week. Their friend who is a biologist in the National park rescued a jaguar with a wounded leg. He shot the animal with a dart to tranquilise it and then treated the animals leg. He invited Mom and Dad to go and watch it being released back into the wild. They couldn't go and were very disappointed about that.

We are hoping to go in front from now on especially once we get charity status. We want to make a difference to the terrible suffering of street animals here and around here. Only time will tell.