WELCOME TO THE FILOZOIKOS WEBSITE
FRIENDS OF THE ANIMALS - ELOUNDA - CRETE
The official site of Elounda's Local Animal Welfare Group
Crete is a beautiful Mediterranean island and like its climate the people are warm and friendly.
However, kindness and friendliness does not exist for many of the animals here hence the reason for creating our organisation a few years ago.

Who are we & What do we do?

We are a small animal welfare organisation and registered charity dedicated to helping those poor animals who are suffering and unable to help themselves. We rescue stray dogs and cats from the streets and it is very often the case that these strays have been cruelly treated or abandoned and often starving. Life for them on the streets is hard and dangerous as they run the risk of poisoning or becoming a victim of the traffic.

As with all animals it is a natural instinct to reproduce but this only adds to the problem. We put them into temporary foster homes and with the help of visiting German vets we sterilize them. This is the only long term solution to controlling the numbers!

In the local schools children are receiving an educational programme on animal welfare which is provided by our organisation. Abandoned dogs and puppies are our daily work, fostering, vaccinating and sterilizing them but our work is all the more difficult because we don't have a sanctuary. We rely on people offering their homes and fostering these animals until they are ready to travel. When this time arrives, we fly the dogs out to various parts of Germany and Switzerland where they are being re-homed with the help of the charity Arche Noah - Crete.
Most of the stray dogs here on Crete are very sweet natured - they have to be to survive! A piece of our heart goes with every single one of them but there are always more to help. Expenses are many; food, vets bills, drugs, collars, airline carriers - every single animal needs its own. Of course other expenses include our very much used car and the airline tickets that will take them to their new lives.

Everyone in our group is a volunteer and most of our group are working hard in our own jobs during the summer. Winters are spent fundraising and helping with the sterilisation & castration programme. Even so on average we manage to send between 100-120 dogs to Germany during the summer months and between 20-30 during the winter when they travel by the truck which is owned by the Arche Noah organisation or, for urgent cases, by air cargo which can be very expensive.

	We have two feeding stations for the stray cats; one in Elounda and one in Aghios Nikolaos filled with dry food and fresh water and they are maintained by us ALL YEAR ROUND. They are intended to provide a regular source of food to try and discourage stray cats from scavenging in the local restaurants and tavernas. Sadly, over the last few years we have had to remove several such feeding stations because of vandalism and because of the food being stolen from them.

Some of our group are wives and mothers who have homes to run in addition to their summer jobs and yes we all get tired and emotional especially when we see the condition of some of these poor animals. We realise that we can't save them all but that will not stop us trying! Despite the numbers of strays and the problems we face, what we do promise is that we will always give our very best efforts!