Bonnie Lukas came to the Island to care for her ailing mother and stayed. Later she founded a shelter in Villalba where she has cared for thousands of abandoned “satos.”
By Ricardo Cortés Chico
VILLALBA – Amid the excitement, Scooter was the first in line to get inside the house. He hardly moved. He looked attentively at the others as if to secure his place. He didn’t wag his tail as the rest of them. But this was not a sign of fright or fear; actually, he could hardly move the lower part of his body.
Bonnie Lukas opened the screen door, and right then the quiet ended. Hurriedly, and helped by a wheelchair built specially for dogs, Scooter walked the aisle that went by the kitchen, and there he lied down in his own cushion next to the file cabinet where they keep all the information about the animals of Second Chance Animal Rescue Shelter.
“Here, everyone has its own story,” said Lukas, founder and director of the organization located in sector Hacienda Limón in Villalba.
In Scooter’s case, he was hit by a car more than a year ago. The blow smashed his back. However, several surgeries and the wheelchair restored him almost to his normal condition. “Even though sometimes you have to press his bladder a little in order for him to urinate,” commented Lukas.
Some dogs suffer deafness, some have had a limb amputated or they have conditions like cancer or bladder stones. Others simply were abandoned or mistreated. Actually, there are around 52 dogs in the Shelter, and the majority are there because of illness or because they had a bad experience with a human at the beginning of their lives.
This is not a common shelter. Here, euthanasia, or killing the animal, is a last resort consideration, “only if they are excessively aggressive or they cannot survive. Some will stay at the Shelter for the rest of their lives, although the goal is to find a home for each one,” she explained.
Some cases are more tragic than others. The female dog Destiny was probably the most recent one that moved Lukas to pity. When they found her inside a trashcan in Barceloneta in 2008, she was undernourished and had cancerous tumors all over her skin. She had five surgeries and they had to amputate one of her hind legs. Although she improved considerably, at the end the illness overpowered her. “Other cases are different. You can see a dog getting better until it fully recovers,” said Lukas, who also worked in dog shelters in Connecticut (USA).
Ten years of service
The effort began in 1999, not too long after Lukas came to the Island to care for her ailing mother, who lived in Villalba. One day, four “satos” appeared in front of her gate, and Lukas decided to feed them and find them homes. More dogs came. Some she rescued herself, others were brought in by people she knew.
Little by little she found homes for the “satos” in the states of New Hampshire and Vermont. It came to a point where she managed to set up a support network devoted exclusively to finding families who are willing to adopt the “satos,” without exception. Lukas estimates that thousands of dogs have been at the Shelter at one time or another. The outcome keeps her in an emotional spiral similar to the one faced by the group who looks for donations to cover the needs of the dogs and the Shelter.
“The needs are many, from food and veterinary fees, volunteers, building materials to building improvements to the dog kennels," commented Circe Arana, who collaborates with the Shelter.
At present, the Shelter support group maintains a webpage (www.scarpr.org) to channel all adoptions, and the donations to operate. Although all of the Shelter’s needs are not being met yet, this group and the web page have paved the way to achieve the goal of halting animal proliferation in the streets of Puerto Rico.
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