Animalsicilia

WHERE WE ARE AT

These projects are not a current priority. Feeding our in-house fostered/sheltered rescues is. Vetting them. Paying for their veterinarian care and medication, for surgeries, testing, old-age related or puppydom issues, Seresto collars, and parasite products... Socializing and rehabilitating them to make them happier in their skin and #adoptable! Rehoming them.

Sterilizing or facilitating the sterilization of as many animals we encounter be they strays or privately-owned ones (research and statistics confirm that unsterilized privately-owned female dogs are the NUMBER ONE SOURCE of new strays from the abandonment of pregnant bitch or her litter or her with her newborn litter. Animalsicilia, through Gabriella’s untiring advocacy effort, also supports and collaborates with volunteers from several organizations to ensure improvements of a City’s public and mandatory catch-neuter-return program (by law every town in Sicily must do this but Sicily and the law are like oil and water, they stay clear of each other...).

In Sicily, without volunteers, this dynamic simply doesn’t work. City officials simply do not comply with the law. Lack of enforcement up to 100% in certain cities!!! They don’t comply with so many other laws on so many levels, that dogs, animals, and strays are viewed as the least of their priorities. Unless “someone” finds a way to profit from it. And believe us, they have been increasingly often finding “ways” for the past decade, and not in the interest of progress and of the animals (“canili-Lager” and the private for-profit or fake non-profit shelter business, jail for life, as well as stray trafficking... You will find Animalsicilia’s page littered with posts about this to explain to a non-Sicilian audience what kind of windmills we are faced with in reality every day, year in, year out).

There was a dedicated photo album titled ACTIVISM/ATTIVISMO for the kind of advocacy on the now unpublished Facebook page of Animalsicilia, to at least attempt to open up the eyes of the honest but ignorant people we so often come across. No cultivated ignorance is accepted on our watch!

LASTLY, a simpler project which is an Animalsicilia YouTube channel where Gabriella is telling the stories of each cat, dog, bird, etc that's ever been with Gabriella and/or at Animalsicilia, geared towards children, to entertain and educate, to raise awareness and open their empathy and sensibility as well as teaching them to observe animals and communicate to others what they're learning from their observation and interactions with animals.

ADOPTION-PROMOTING APP FOR SICILIAN RESCUE PETS

Create a multilingual mobile and web-based app, for cross-European distribution, to facilitate homing and rehoming dogs and cats and occasional farm or sports animals once they are already in a shelter or foster or sanctuary situation and once they are already considered adoptable in legal terms and in readily vetted/good health terms.

It also includes a section for not-yet adoptables whose caretakers need support with boarding or vetting or behavioral rehab work.

Ethics and therefore monitoring is key throughout the app’s operation so that users (adopting families or sponsors) find three types of posts in the app: the unreviewed ones (at your own risk and peril), the reviewed and explicitly approved ones, the rejected ones but hey, we still keep them in as a way to keep the channel open and for posting folks to go and improve their status and thus a dog's status and adoption chances.

The format imposed on anyone wanting to publish their 'case' standardizes content and ensures order and discipline, as empty fields (lacking data) mean our basic info request is not fulfilled, so that the post cannot get published until it is.

However, this system does not guarantee that posted data is true... and we want therefore also have the option to verify through our wide network of volunteers that a given animal does reflect what is posted about it (the verified category of posts).

Naturally, anyone willing to adopt can contact the posting party and it is going to be important to remind everyone involved in any capacity that it is good practice to fill out adoption applications and to have in-house pre-adoption visits by expert volunteers before an animal changes hands. Hence the additional need to include a whole set of volunteers and their networks as a category in our app, whose offer is simply to support in any needed part of the process from assisting a posting party locally to checking applicants on paper and in person to offering to accompany an adopted animal on their trip to their new family or helping with finding a travel solution for an animal for whom this is a problem due to their remote location.

Companies advertising services though are excluded from the app. They can sponsor the app and that would count as an advertisement for them.

There are critical steps in homing rescued strays that are insanely time and money-consuming and not super safe either, as per the current state of affairs, and which this pan-European app would make easier to resolve, or at least improve several scenarios.

Staff at the app is volunteer-based and verifies as many 'posts/claims' as possible, that's it. The expenses linked to creating and maintaining the app are advertisement-covered. Advertisers are companies that operate boarding facilities, transport pets, and sell pet supplies such as zooplus.com.

800-ANIMALS TELEPHONE INFOLINE FOR TOURISTS IN SICILY

Don’t you all think that it would be wonderful if we could launch a toll-free 1-800-ANIMALSICILY (800-ANIMALSICILIA) phone number for Sicily where several of us Sicily-based volunteers speaking various languages would answer calls from foreigners needing info or help, taking turns, 24/7?

Our volunteer operators would be reachable during their available hours via a cascade-switchboard and everyone needs to be on the same page as to the information to be dispensed and how to communicate the delicate material to mostly clueless tourists.

We would want callers to know how to act best and also in line with the law especially when faced with an emergency and we'd need to have billboards at Sicily's main ports of entry, and cards at hotel receptions, and enroll tour operators, tourism agencies and rental villa

and Airbnb owners in spreading this tool.

We would have a simple website focusing on telling people about what an emergency is, what the law expects from anyone in Sicily facing a stray-related situation of any kind, what their best action protocol should be in any given situation, how to report via different channels with ready-forms in 3 to 5 languages online.

We would make sure that terms and definitions are clear as the rescue or dog welfare language in Sicily and Italy's South (non- or under-developed regions!) is very different from other places in the Western World.

Dispatching the closest rescuers or law enforcement wouldn't be our operators' job but in extreme cases, we would do that too.

A SPAY/NEUTER CLINIC

A SPAY/NEUTER CLINIC
and perhaps a traveling clinic in a van...

a private sterilization and microchipping campaign to educate & help owners who cannot afford to spay/neuter their pets resulting in abandoned pregnant dogs or puppies and litters which has been identified as the Number One Cause & Source of Strays in Southern Italy!

KIDS EDUCATION

We've devised a school education program for elementary school kids (a stage play and workshop) to learn about strays and how to handle encountering strays and avoid worsening the stray issue at large - it includes their teachers learning from us professionals namely volunteer rescues and veterinarians, through our "modules" (also online courses) where they learn how to best educate their students about the stray plight and dog handling and ownership while also entertaining them (the curriculum and collabs are halfway set up already)

ANIMALSICILIA CENTER

A SHELTER/SANCTUARY/REHAB & TRAINING SPACE/BOARDING FACILITY

our MOVE from our over a decade-long digs to a house with some green space, ideally a farm space of sorts, where to build an animal center-sanctuary shelter-training-rehab-post-op-physio-boarding facility with an assistance and service dog academy, a pet-therapy program, and a search-and-rescue dog school, with room & board for #workholiday volunteering guests, to implement a much needed and strategic plan with effects to be felt today immediately and to plant seeds for future improvement in an island and Region entirely devoid of any such initiatives, spaces... and dreams...

Gabriella's short bio

Gabriella Becchina was born in Basel, Switzerland, and presently lives in Sicily, where she is involved in various projects that unite nature and nurture, tourism and cooking, entrepreneurship, multi-language translation, mental health, animal welfare, consulting and writing.

She attended Columbia University and holds a Master’s degree in Art History, having interrupted her Ph.D. studies. Gabriella is fluent in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

These days, she works mostly as a translator, interpreter, trip planner, and consultant while running an animal rescue and sanctuary, and offering tourism services in southwestern Sicily such as custom trip planning, private cheffing, foraging excursions, deep dives into truffles, event planning and guiding groups.

She is currently applying herself to a memoir and cookbook titled "From the Big Apple to the Big Olive", born out of her experiences in academia, the food world, olive farming and olive oil production, creating hospitality destinations and activities, and teaching local students and visitors, chronicling her move from New York City to Sicily. Her next narrative endeavor, titled "Animalsicilia: How to help animals in Sicily", focuses on two decades of animal rescue in Sicily, the lessons learned and the knowledge gained, to be shared with anyone, especially foreigners, staying or travelling in Sicily today.

Find out more on Linktr.ee/gabriellabecchina

To support Animalsicilia, the rescue, and if you'd like to connect with Gabriella in view of your trip to Sicily, or while on the island, visit

Direct.me/animalsicilia.

Follow each of our pets on social media

Every cat and dog at Animalsicilia, and every dog in boarding or shelter throughout Sicily who's under Animalsicilia's wing, has her own dedicated hashtag on Instagram.

You can follow current residents, shelter and foster pets, looked after strays, including our so-called #adoptabledogs (see https://direct.me/l/3N8a), our past adopted animals, and our beloved deceased ones too.

While current posts mostly regard our current adoptables, we post about every Animalsicilia-lovebug we ever met/had/took care of/rescued/rehomed.

E.g. of beloved past furry paws:

#giuliettaanimalsicilia (rescued 2021)

#darkoanimalsicilia (2014)

#deliaanimalsicilia (2015-d. 2022)

#tellaanimalsicilia (2019 - d. 2021)

#peppabeigeanimalsicilia (2013)

#nobileanimalsicilia (2019 - d. 2019)

#salvamayaanimalsicilia (2018 - d. 2018)

#eoloanimalisicilia (2013-d. 2022)

#evaanimalsicilia (2009-d. 2022)

Three types of free-roaming dogs

You've seen a roaming dog people or rescues in that area tell you is microchipped:

It could be two different scenarios. Who's the microchip registered to, the City (i.e. the dog is a so-called "monitored stray" #monitoredstraysicily), or a private person (i.e. the dog by law should not be allowed to roam free and the owner can be fined by the City / Municipal police for "incauta custodia")?

A note on monitored strays: they are the result of a legal practice which is DOG TNR, trap-neuter-return. These are dogs that were strays, were captured, sterilized and placed back where they came from, namely the street of a populated area where citizens and rescues can feed and vet the dog through their volunteers and benefactors networks.

The third type of roaming dog is a non-microchipped dog. Hence, presumably, a freshly dumped or proper born-on-the-street stray. He should be reported anyway and especially if you deem his conditions not to be the best (of course, you wouldn't know if he's microchipped as a visitor on vacation, but maybe a rescuer can come check it out with their microchip scanner).

On a police report you can specify that you DO or DON'T KNOW if the dog you're reporting is microchipped. If you happen to know the number because a vet or rescue volunteer scanned it for you, oftentimes the police will refuse to include the number in your report. Insist. You're the one reporting, you're responsible for your statement. Police are more often than not ignorant of laws (yes!) and trying to keep their work minimal (a microchip means having to contact ASP and shelters and find out who the owner is and do full work on a case, starting with double-checking the number namely having to catch the dog to read the chip---imagine that, performing one's duty which they've abundantly paid for, what a drag!).

WHAT & HOW TO SEND FEEDBACK
ABOUT YOUR SICILIAN EXPERIENCE
WITH ANIMAL WELFARE:

Once you've tried everything while in Sicily, and nothing worked out, you can write to authorities, the press, and national organizations. The local authorities responsible by law for intervening in the case of any straying animal are first and foremost Municipal Police (polizia municipale aka vigili urbani) but any law enforcement, fire or forestry brigades, public administration, townhall cabinets and officials, heads of departments, public dog shelter staff, public veterinary service employees aka ASP veterinarians.

Feel free to use my Animalsicilia report form template, a bilingual ENG-ITA document, to report or try to report at a local police HQ (scroll down the links listed under Direct.me/animalsicilia to find the Reporting Form).

Independently of whether you have found help from a local rescue or not, when encountering a lack of help SPECIFICALLY from these authorities, such as a refusal to register your report, write to the officials below sending them all the relevant evidence to support the validity of the incident you're reporting, namely name and list everyone you contacted in search of help/intervention or when attempting to report an animal in need, add (or upload to a cloud drive and then insert link in email) screenshots of phone calls, photos and videos, recordings, witness testimonies and contacts, time and place details, everyone's responses or lack thereoft, details, etc. and, of course, your ID/passport, address and best contact modalities to reach back to you. Always make sure to specifiy whether you're still in Sicily or have left the island already.

NOTE:
Whenever you write to any of the following authorities, please send a copy to animalsicilia@gmail.com for archival purposes, and so we can forward to the relevant press entities and general media, as well as more grassroots local politicians in our effort to reach and pressure as many responsible, unabiding entities and figures, further raising awareness and calling for solutions. Thank you.

1.

Dott. Giovanni Giacobbe Giacobbe
Garante regionale dei diritti animali, Sicilia
2022-2027

email:
garantedeidirittianimali@regione.sicilia.it

N.B.: a Regional law instituted him as the first in this position (translates to Ombudsman of the Sicilian Authority for Animal Rights to receive and handle all complaints regarding a lack of law enforcement and performance of duty by Sicilian institutions).

You can look it up online by searching for:

1º/SG on 31 August 2023 "ai sensi dell'art. 7 della legge regionale 3 agosto 2022, n. 15, il dott. Giovanni Giacobbe Giacobbe è stato nominato Garante regionale dei diritti degli animali."

2.

You can also address your reflections, remarks, complaints to the following Regional administrative and political offices (www.regione.sicilia.it/istituzioni/regione/strutture-regionali):

2.A.

Department of Health (Public Veterinary Services) namely Assessorato Regionale della salute
www.regione.sicilia.it/istituzioni/regione/strutture-regionali/assessorato-salute

2.B.

Department of Tourism, namely Assessorato regionale del turismo dello sport e dello spettacolo
www.regione.sicilia.it/istituzioni/regione/strutture-regionali/assessorato-turismo-sport-spettacolo

2.C.

Department of Environment, namely Assessorato regionale del territorio e dell'ambiente
www.regione.sicilia.it/istituzioni/regione/strutture-regionali/assessorato-territorio-ambiente

2.D.

Department of Economy/Productive Activities, namely Assessorato regionale delle attività produttive and Assorato dell'economia
www.regione.sicilia.it/istituzioni/regione/strutture-regionali/assessorato-attivita-produttive

2.E.

Department of Sicilian Cultural Identity, namely Assessorato regionale dei beni culturali e dell'identità siciliana
www.regione.sicilia.it/istituzioni/regione/strutture-regionali/assessorato-beni-culturali-identita-siciliana

2.F.

The Sicilian Parliament, namely Assemblea Regionale Siciliana
www.ars.sicilia.it

2.G.

The President of Sicily, namely Presidenza della Regione Siciliana
www.regione.sicilia.it/istituzioni/regione/strutture-regionali/presidenza-regione

3.

Further, you can cc. or write to political leaders via their specific party cabinet ("segreteria di partito") and do so for every party whose members, "consiglieri" (deputies) are currently seated at the Sicilian Parliament. Find out which parties are in place now, then search for a specific party and its leader-representative-deputy in Sicily. Start here:

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assemblea_regionale_siciliana

4. email cc. to

PRESS

Regional -
GIORNALE DI SICILIA
redazioneweb@gds.it (Subject: Animali - Sicilia randagia)

LA SICILIA
redazione@lasicilia.it (Subject: c.a. Qua La Zampa - Sicilia randagia)

National -
LA STAMPA
lettere@lastampa.it (Subject: c.a. La Zampa - Sicilia randagia)

5. email cc. to

ANIMAL PROTECTION ORGANIZATIONS

National -
LAV
info@lav.it

OIPA
info@oipa.org

ENPA
segreteria@enpa.org
enpa@enpa.org

LIDA
segreteria@lida.it

There's an increase of certain diseases/parasite infections in Sicily. I'd therefore suggest the following extra attention:

Rabies immunization (included in pet passport requirements anyway), is necessary to enter Italy from a foreign country.

Further, ensure that during your trip you carry a Letter of Good Health (= a certificate from the vet stating the dog is well and ok to travel) no older than 2 weeks before travel (I bring a pet to the vet for a visit 5 to 2 days before the departure day). In a separate letter or in the passport, have your vet certify worming was done for standard intestinal parasites no earlier than 5 days and no later than 2 days before travel. This needs to be dated, signed and stamped by your vet or, in certain countries, your pharmacist.

To protect your pet from Leishmaniasis, visit Leishvet.org for current prevention information and veterinary needs. All of Italy and parts of Europe have Leish now too, but in Sicily it's quite prevalent. Not all dogs are susceptible in the same manner, and cats are also subject to the bites from the sandfly ("flebotomo" in Italian), so come prepared. Put on collars, if using, and/or vaccinate against Leish at least 2 weeks prior to arrival.

Also, ensure your dog doesn't eat anything from the ground, or from an outdoor bowl etc. by using a muzzle. There's lungworm in Sicily too, and scientific research indicates the vector's primarily a type of snail ("chiocciola") so tiny it finds its way into our pups' mouth depending on where they are (garden spaces, yards, grassy patches, puddles, most typically). In case it happens that after a few weeks your dog has a little off cough, just have their poop (picked up over three days in a little jar, or as per your veterinarian's protocol) analyzed in a lab for Angiostrongylus vasorum. There are now instant Snap Tests for blood and poop from Idexx. The treatment course is usually worming against this parasite with certain brands over a certain time (vet prescribed).

No panic but these are two growingly common issues for dogs catching bugs in Sicilia.

Of the other hand, Sicily has less heartworm/skinworm (both Filaria types) than elsewhere, but is sadly catching up on that front too, so keep that protection up as well.

Enjoy your trip with your pup!