A message from Roz:
“I founded the charity in 2014 after working with our rescuer Cristina Paun for a year or so after adopting my dog from her and visiting her in Romania where she had been rescuing dogs for over 20 years. Cristina and I are Trustees along with Lee who is also an adopter. We had 120 dogs on a shelter built on rented land.
The building and land next door to our rented shelter became available to buy for 12,000 euros and we fund raised to purchase it from our supporters in UK and Germany. A business man in Germany heard about us and asked to come to Romania to meet and see our shelter. He offered to fund the build of the shelter. Once completed our shelter met all EU standards with a vet room, quarantine section, Indoor rooms with out door runs and around 60 outdoor pens (see video). He then went on to purchase a 25 acre farm for us which was totally unique in Romania with all our dogs being free running, they are not penned up they have access to the 4 heated barns and a lake as well as around 200 out door kennels if they wish. There are currently 800 dogs living together happily on the farm where we see very few fall outs between them.
We also have the puppy house which houses our young and very old dogs. As of January 2022 we have 1380 dogs in our care. Our shelters are known as Wonderland.
We currently employ 16 local people to care for the dogs along with 2 drivers for our self funded transport company which is used to transport our own dogs to their adopters in UK, Germany, Austria and France.
We have over 1250 dogs adopted in UK and over 5000 in EU to date we have rescued nearly 8000 dogs from the streets and public shelter of Targoviste.
We work with local schools to over education programmes to the children to hopefully create a more compassionate generation with a better under standing of animal welfare. We do spay and neuter campaigns at least 4 times a year, offering free spay and neuters to locals to reduce the number of dogs & cats born. Cristina regularly challenges the council in Targoviste on their lack of care and ignorance of the animal welfare laws.
Our shelters cost over 20,000 euros a month to run with the costs being as follows:
Wages – 6000
Raw meat – 4000
Biscuit – 4000
Vet bills – 5000+ (depending on the dogs rescued needs)
Plus electricity, local taxes, wood for heating, waste removal & large animal feed.
We currently also have 3 horses, 1 goat, 3 sheep, 2 cows, 1 pig and a donkey all who have been rescued form neglect. We have always prided ourselves on the fact that we NEVER as for money to rescue any animal, we ALWAYS rescue and then ask for help. The animal always comes first.
Our main focuses for 2022 are;
To ensure the dogs always have food.
To get as many dogs as possible in to adopted homes.
To reduce the increase in dogs born through spay and neutering.
To reduce the cruelty by humans on animals through education.
We also need to ensure all our dogs receive their annual vaccinations at a cost of 20 euros per vaccine.
But we also need to somehow raise in excess of 15,000 to purchase a new van for use in Romania for the dogs to be transported from the public shelter and to go to the vets.
Our immediate needs are always to raise enough money to pay the workers, feed the dogs and pay the vet bills. Sadly over the last few months it has not been possible to meet all our commitments and we have mounting debts in Romania with our vet, electricity, large animal feed and wood suppliers.
We fund raise through a variety of ways, monthly auctions, scratch cards/raffles, direct debit scheme, general appeals, sponsorship, selling of merchandise (hoodies, t shirts, calendars, mugs etc) our clothing is provided free of charge from a supporter with an embroidery company and as a registered charity we claim gift aid as well.
We offer full rescue back up and will always take our dogs back if adopters cannot continue to care for them. Our contract stipulates that adopters must give us regular updates which most of them.
We have a recommended trainer called Meesh Masters who specialises in Romanian dogs and whose information and advice sheets we give to all adopters.
I am always available for any queries or issues our adopters are having. Prior to Brexit we used to make a small profit on our adoptions but with the new import/export charges, vat charges, increase in transport costs we no longer make any profit and if we increase our adoption fee any higher it would put people off adopting from us.
I am lucky enough to be manager at a private kennels and use the kennels when needed for our surrendered dogs but again this costs us around £1800 per month which is heavily discounted.We currently have just 7 dogs in UK who have been surrendered back to us.”
We advertise our dogs on both facebook, our website and external websites like Dogsblog.
You can find more information on our facebook pages:
Bid to save a stray Friends of Targoviste rescued dogs
Bid to save a stray
Bid to save a stray wonderland cats and dogs for adoption
Bid to save a strays life monthly auction
Bid to save a stray scratch cards and raffle
Bid to save a stray 50/50 draw
Bid to save a stray christmas shop
We also have a closed group which is just for adopters.
