Friends of Humane Services in Tijuana

The government does not provide a mechanism to treat the thousands of starving and sick street animals that roam the city. Nor does it have a program to provide veterinary care to the pets of the poor. While the problem is daunting and appears to be so large as to be impossible to handle for an organization of modest means such as HSTJ, we nevertheless adopted the philosophy of approaching the problem one animal at a time and as our resources permitted. Since HSTJ cannot afford to run a private shelter to accommodate these vast numbers of animals, it had to find an alternative to the traditional rescue where an animal is brought to a shelter, treated and placed for adoption. HSTJ has re-defined street rescues. While our volunteers still do one-on-one street rescues, we also have devised another type of rescue, the Street Clinic. It occurred to us that a large number of the abandoned street animals could be saved if only they could be made fit enough to be accepted by neighborhoods and/or individuals who would care for them and get themsterilized. In January 2007, HSTJ initiated street clinics and encouraged the people in the poorest of neighborhoods to bring their pets for basic treatments e.g. de-worming, mange treatment, tick and flea treatment. We encouraged them to bring the street animals too. It worked. After being treated and no longer suffering from diarrhea, mange, ticks and eye infections, they were either adopted by individuals or by a group of people on the block where they were roaming. View pictures from our past Itchy Scratchy clinics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hstj/collections/72157623788569920/

FOCUSED ON ANIMAL HEALTH AND COMMUNITY HEALTH.Working to combat illnesses by showing people how to eliminate situations that spread diseases to people and animals from contact with contagious animals, stagnant water, garbage, trash, etc., and by providing examples of sanitary, healthy living conditions as well as administering appropriate treatments to the animals. These programs provide information about the advantage of maintaining a healthy living environment especially by avoiding contaminating one's surroundings and giving a high priority to total family involvement in achieving these goals. We believe the education needs to start with the children. Most of the animals are brought to our street clinics by the neighborhood children, always lovingly clutching their pets, they just lack the education on proper care and responsibility. WITH YOUR SUPPORT, WE CAN GIVE THEM A CHANCE! REMEMBER, ANIMALS HAVE NO NATIONALITY Please visit our blog for information on all of our events and programs: http://www.friendsofhumanesocietydetijuana.blogspot.com/