We cannot let the dogs Ivana cares for in her shelter and on the streets starve!

1. In Serbia, Ivana has almost no kibble left to feed the 70 street dogs she cares for. Without help, they will starve!

"Every day, with Marina, my volunteer, we feed more than 70 dogs in the streets. They wait for us, they know where and when we come by, and for many of them, that bowl is their only meal of the day. Today, I have almost nothing left to put in it: I barely have two or three days of kibble left, and after that, there is nothing.

For the past four or five days, I have already had to start rationing. I give each of them less than they need, just to stretch out the little that remains. It cannot last long. And with summer setting in, everything is harder: the heat wears these dogs down quickly, especially on a half-empty stomach.

I am still standing. But the stock will not hold out. If this campaign does not succeed, I will soon have nothing left to bring on my rounds, and these 70 dogs have no one else but us."

2. In the summer heat, with no water and no food, the street dogs will grow weaker and be driven toward the worst

"The hardest thing right now is that the dogs in the street have no access to clean drinking water. With the heat rising, they search, they wander around, and often they find nothing, neither anything to drink nor anything to eat. A hungry, dehydrated dog in the middle of summer can become weak in just a few days.

And when I can no longer do my rounds properly, they start going farther away to look elsewhere. That is when everything can turn bad: they fight over scraps of food, they go near people, near shops, and very quickly they are seen as a nuisance. Then the dog catchers are called, and once they end up there, it is over for them. Cupka, for example, a little female dog I have been feeding in the street for three years, is only holding on because she knows she can count on that meal. If I stop coming, she will start wandering again, alone and hungry.

For now, I do not yet have a tragedy to tell, and that is only because I am rationing and scraping the last bits from the bottom of the bags. But I know exactly what happens when food runs out, I have lived through it before, and that is precisely what I am trying to prevent before it is too late."

3. Tihi, thrown into the street at two months old, is only holding on thanks to Ivana's daily bowl of food

"Tihi is two years old today. Someone threw him into the street when he was only two months old, a baby, left to fend for himself. Since then, we have been the ones feeding him, day after day, and it has been going on for two years without a break.

Thanks to those meals, he is in very good health today, and when you know where he came from, it feels like a small miracle. But that health hangs by a thread: the bowl has to be full when he comes to wait for us. Tihi never learned to manage on his own, he never had to, he has always relied on us.

If I no longer have kibble to give him, everything we have built over two years will collapse. A dog like him, so full of life, can decline very quickly when the food disappears, especially in this heat. I do not want it to come to that, not after all this time spent protecting him."

4. At the shelter, 57 other dogs are also being rationed, including injured dogs Ivana could not turn away

"At the shelter, the situation is no better. I care for 57 dogs, and they too are no longer eating enough: I am rationing their portions as well, because the stock is the same for everyone, and it is almost empty. The difference is that they cannot go anywhere. They depend entirely on me, for every meal.

And the shelter is not getting any emptier, quite the opposite. Recently, I took in Bronte, who arrived all alone with a broken leg and so thin it hurt to see her. How can you turn away a dog in that state? I do not know how. But every dog I take in is one more mouth to feed with supplies that barely exist anymore.

When dogs are weakened and underfed, their immunity drops and illnesses start to take hold. At the shelter, just like in the street, I am chasing after the same few bags of kibble, and there is not enough for everyone."

5. Run over on the pavement, Riplay is preparing for a second operation that she will not be able to withstand on an empty stomach

"Riplay is only one year old. A car ran over her right on the pavement, and she ended up with a fractured pelvis and hip. I took her in immediately and brought her to the vet, without thinking twice, even though I knew it meant even more debt. I could not leave her like that.

She has been at the shelter for four months. She has already undergone surgery on her pelvis, she recovered from it, and we are now preparing for the operation on her hip. But for a small body to get through two surgeries and rebuild itself, she needs to eat properly, she needs to regain her strength. And that is the whole problem: how can I get her back on her feet if I cannot even feed the shelter anymore?

Riplay has already made it halfway. She has a real chance of walking normally one day. Letting her grow weak now, for lack of kibble, would mean wasting everything she has already been through. And I cannot bring myself to do that."

6. Drowning in debt and with no donations at all, Ivana has reached breaking point

"Financially, I am at the end of my rope. I already owe nearly €1,000 to the vet, not counting what I still owe the pet shop for kibble I had to take on credit. I have even been forced to stop the antiparasitic treatments for my dogs: I simply cannot afford them anymore, and I know the risk that puts them in.

For years, I have been putting out calls for help with food, and no one answers. Donations have completely stopped, people here no longer have the means to help, and the doors I knock on stay closed. The last Animal Webaction campaign kept us going for about four months, and that breathing space was vital. But four months go by quickly, the debts never disappeared, and here I am again, facing empty bags.

Today, honestly, Animal Webaction is my only hope of being able to carry on. I have no other solution left to turn to."

7. Ivana is not asking for money, only kibble to stop the dogs from starving to death.

"I pay for this work with myself, every day. Not only with money: what it really takes from me is time, nerves, emotions. There are days when I am exhausted, when I feel overwhelmed. But I do not stop.

What keeps me going is every life saved. And even more so when one of these dogs ends up being adopted and finally finds the life they deserve: those moments are like the wind at my back. In recent months, I have had that joy for seven of them. But at the same time, abandonments are exploding, far more than usual, and new dogs end up outside every week; for every one I see leave for a family, several more arrive needing to be fed.

I am not asking for money. I am only asking for kibble, so that neither the shelter dogs nor the street dogs starve to death this summer. That is all I need to keep saving them, one meal at a time."

6. By taking action now, you can help Ivana receive 2960 kilos of kibble for her dogs.

Animal Webaction has a logistics centre in Serbia, which allows us to intervene quickly and deliver kibble.

7.  Campaigns launched on Animal Webaction often fail...

When a campaign fails, Animal Webaction cannot deliver the products. The beneficiary doesn't receive anything and the buyers are refunded. 

8. In Serbia, street dogs are hunted by the state and ignored by the population, volunteers like Ivana are their only hope.

If you know of a foundation or NGO that could help Ivana, please invite them to contact us so that we can put them in touch.

If you represent an animal welfare foundation or NGO, please help Ivana's dogs, contact us and we will put you in touch!

If you want to come to Ivana's shelter, or if you would like to directly send her some kibble or a cheque, contact Ivana via Facebook (note: direct help is under your own responsibility).

9. If you make a purchase on Animal Webaction, it will be protected by our guarantees.