Marita is an animal lover, who has selflessly dedicated her life to caring for unwanted and abandoned dogs and cats in the Philippines. Marita set up a sanctuary in the hills, near Manila 4 years ago, and currently provides shelter to 400 dogs and 200 cats but she needs help!

Almost all the dogs are able to roam freely about the 2 hectare site, although there are pens to separate any aggressive or poorly dogs. In order to manage the number of dogs, they also have to keep the un-neutered dogs in pens separated from the main group.

The atmosphere within the shelter is quite amazing; the noise of the dogs greeting you as you enter the site is almost deafening and the friendly attention that you receive from the residents is overwhelming. Unbelievably Marita knows almost every dog by name and they clearly all trust and adore her and her dedicated staff.  

But it’s not an easy road for Marita, just to feed the 400 dogs takes 110kg of dog food per day, which costs about £700 a week and although Marita has a small number of donors, this is a vast amount to sustain.

Having visited the shelter and observed the work that Marita is doing to care for these neglected dogs, we are confident that IWCT can offer her some much needed help.

Another expense for Marita is neutering. Nearly all the dogs that come to her are in need of neutering and she currently pays a visiting private vet £35 per dog and with 121 dogs still awaiting surgery this is going to be a slow and expensive process.  

We are excited to report that IWCT has agreed to fund a number of clinics at Marita’s shelter and on10th April we held our first event, with our veterinary team working tirelessly, in very hot conditions, for 8 hours to neuter 54 of Marita’s dogs and we are aiming to go back for a second visit in the coming months. 

We are also keen to help with the shelter’s adoption programme. Until now, Marita has been very wary of re-homing many of her dogs, for fear of them ending up back on the streets or worse, being captured by dog meat traders. But with a fairly regular influx of rescued dogs coming to her it’s essential that some of the younger, healthier dogs get re-homed with loving families and we are hoping that our Adoption Manager will work directly with Marita to set up an official re-homing programme with the shelter.