Animals Lebanon in Beirut is helping many Syrian refugees with their animals.
In the September 9, 2013 issue of the Lebanon Daily Star, Brooke Anderson, in her article “Animals Lebanon marks five years of awareness,” writes about the dedicated work that Animals Lebanon is doing in circumstances made challenging by the nearby war in Syria.
Now around one quarter of the population of Lebanon is made up of refugees who have fled from Syria.
In November 2012, Jason Mier, Executive Director of Animals Lebanon, received an email from a man in Damascus. An accompanying photo showed the man, wearing a hardhat, sitting with his dog, who he’d had for fourteen years. The man, whose name is Maan, wrote that he’d been more or less confined to his small apartment for the past year with his dog, Juicy. The neighborhood was being bombed every day.
He wrote that he was planning to go to Switzerland to live with his daughter, but that he wouldn’t leave without Juicy. Because of the Swiss quarantine regulations, his dog wouldn’t be able to enter Switzerland for two months. He’d prepared nine pages of information and travel documents for Juicy, and he asked that Animals Lebanon please help by finding her a safe place to stay for two months until she could enter Switzerland to be with him.
Of course, Jason Mier immediately replied that they would help, and he found a foster home in Beirut where Juicy stayed for two months, before joining Maan in Switzerland.
Animals Lebanon is receiving about five similar requests each day from Syians for help with their animals, as well as the sixty or so requests they normally respond to.
Jason Mier says there are four small zoos in the Damascus area, and it’s difficult to get information about how the animals are doing.
In areas of Syria where there’s been a lot of shelling or where there are food shortages, life is very hard for the animals. Animals Lebanon does everything they can to help.
To read the original article in the Lebanon Daily Star, click here.
To visit the website of Animals Lebanon or to donate, click here.
Photo: Courtesy of Animals Lebanon / This is a different dog, Chippers, who was rescued in Lebanon and now has a happy home in the U.S.