A Message from Sharon Smart -- Founder of Mayan Families Organization

This week we held a clinic in Panajachel. We try to hold them monthly so that we can spay and neuter animals. The suffering of the animals here is enormous and we are trying to reduce the population of future animals. This week we spayed and neutered 28 animals, that represents a lot of dogs that will not be giving birth to puppies in the near future.

The dog photographed, we named him Scrappy, he is old and blind. His owners tied him up and were basically starving him to death. We rescued him, Selaine, fed him,gave him water spent a long time petting him and holding him and then we put him down. We do not have the facilities to care for dogs- and especially one who is blind and old. We did the best that we could for him.

While doing the clinic we heard a horrendous story from one of the women. Her sister - in - law had several dogs. One of the dogs, a nursing mother, stole some of the chickens eggs, ( the dog was probably starving) to punish the dog and she said " to teach the other dogs a lesson" , they put up a noose and hung the dog, they then hung all the little puppies.
We also heard another woman tell someone else that she had another dog at home that had puppies and that she was going to starve the dog and the puppies to death. She said that she was sick of puppies.

This is the reason that we do the spay and neuter clinics. This is also the reason that in January we are starting animal education classes in some of the schools in Panajachel. We will be teaching the children that animals have needs, they need food , water and shelter. We will be teaching them that their is a way to be kind to animals. We hope, one day, little by little that this will make a difference.

We are in urgent need of funds to be able to continue these clinics. It costs us $20 US to spay or neuter a dog or cat. If you could help with paying for just one animal to be done - we would be very grateful.

Sharon