Seeing the overwhelming amount of stray dogs and cats in Nafpaktos region, Greece around 2010 and the fact that only a few people were willing to help homeless or abused animals, Yiota, Dionysia and Rena, each individually, decided to volunteer in order to provide protection, medical care and shelter to homeless or abused animals, in their very own homes.

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By word of mouth, regarding their volunteer animal welfare work, puppies and animals in need were abandoned in boxes outside their homes, and suddenly had an overwhelming amount of cats and dogs under their care, although had no space or funding to accommodate them all at this point, and needed to add more volunteers in the team, but most importantly had to find a private area and build shelter to provide for all animals under their care.

 

They decided to start a non-government organisation which would help with the financial struggle, since they received no help from the authorities and solely relied on their own funding; added three more members in their voluntary team, Fofi, Michael and Antigoni and build the shelter commencing 2014. By 2020, the total number of volunteers has increased to seven, with our new volunteer addition, Sofia.

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The shelter is a 4 acre private area, surrounded by olive groves and has over 80 dogs under our protection. The animals are taken care of within our premises until they are adopted. most of the dogs are neutered and in good health, although there are some dogs that have been under our care since we first opened our shelter that are older and difficult to give up for adoption at this point.

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Even though Happy Tails Shelter has re-homed over 1000 animals until today, there are still more than 80 still waiting to be adopted looking for their forever home. In order to continue our volunteer work we need your support. See how you can support us in different ways.