Ana Yira Ramírez Velásquez has had a very special bond with animals from an early age, but she couldn’t imagine being that strong until she was 15 years old, when she fell prey to defending a horse against abuse.
It was in 1985 for his workplace in Madre Vieja Sur, San Cristóbal. A wagon driver pushed a horse up a hill with a heavy load of blocks. I hit him to get ahead.
“The horse couldn’t get up and he kept hitting it. When the horse couldn’t take it anymore, he fell to his knees on the talvia, which hurt a lot. As if it gave me something in my heart. I left the office because I was busy making receipts, selling tool parts; I left the office blind, took off his sweater and hit him all over the neck, in the face. When the carter turned and saw that it was me, he tried to attack me, but the guys who made the lathes in the workshop grabbed him, took the stirrups from the horse’s horse and the cart went down, without a horse. They broke like 20 or 30 blocks. I also had to pay the blocks and the deposit. He still sees me and greets me ”.
She spent most of the day in prison until her boyfriend paid her bail. Yira keeps pictures of her very small surrounded by pigeons, ducks, horses, dogs and other animals in the courtyard of the house.
“My father wanted to kill me because he filled his house with animals, with dogs. There were no bathrooms in my house, I kept them outside in a latrine ”.
His devotion to animals is widely known throughout the community.
Protects about 70 dogs. Alone in the small backyard of his home, in the Puerto Rico sector of the city of San Cristóbal, he feeds and cares for about 40 dogs and dozens of cats. The other dogs have been “rescued” in other places.
“On the street there are more who don’t fit here, but she still brings them food every day, vaccinates them and sterilizes them slowly, because sterilization is very expensive,” says her daughter Ana Lucía.
The young woman and her two brothers inherited the zeal for animal conservation from their mother. They also take care of bathing, feeding and grooming the dogs.
Ana Lucía shares with Listín Diario how animals little by little ‘absorbed’ their lives.
In 2015, they legally established the Patronage for the Preservation and Care of Animals (Diakimyi Foundation) because they were told that the government only helped when they were formally organized, but the help has not arrived yet.
“Many neighbors have complained about the noise, we know they are right, but we don’t want to leave this job.”
YIRA’S DREAM
It is difficult to take care of all the animals in such a small space and so they separated the animals, hoping to one day have a shelter or a more suitable place.
“We dream of that,” says Yira. Perhaps it is utopian, as many people tell me, that if they don’t even take care of the children here, much less will take care of the dogs. And I tell them ‘well, the kids belong to their mom and dad, Conani and the Dominican government’.
Understand that a large number of sensitive people are willing to work for animals. His dream, still with a broken voice, is this:
“We have a small patch of land, which is not enough for much, but our dream is to have something there that is worth taking care of animals, a public hospital to take care of animals, so that poor people have their dogs. can take with you. Because there have been people who have said to me: Yira, I want to save my dog, but with what, if I go to the pharmacy with 400 pesos and healed my son from the flu and give him medicine for the fever But a vet asks me two thousand and three thousand pesos to treat my dog, I have to throw it away because I don’t want to see it die like that.
So when people talk to me like that, what can I do? Dreaming that there is a public hospital for dogs. Although utopian I am clear, I believe animals deserve to be cared for; animals have that value to me. I have to see it happen before I die. That’s my only dream, and for the government to help me with the vets, because I know there will be people who will help me with the drugs.
AN AMAZING HOSTEL
Building a shelter is also the dream of many animal protectors in San Cristóbal, including the social worker, former deputy and chairman of the Working Women Movement (MMT), Luz Eneida Mejía; the vet Miguel Martínez and Gianna Santiago, of the Madre Vieja Sur district council.
“You need a space where animals can be and people can adopt them. A place to heal, vaccinate and put them up for adoption. A welcoming place that involves professionals and volunteers – there are many people with a passion for animals – and where the authorities take charge. A suitable place where the animal is and there are people who take care of it, ”says Luz Eneida.
The social worker prefers to speak of a sheltered place than a hospital, because the word hospital is associated with a place for the sick.
“It’s better to have an animal shelter where people can take them if they can’t take care of them, or they can go and see if they want one; a kind of nursery ”.
And that they have access to neuter them.
At the moment, both the foundation and the animal activists only receive pledges from the authorities. They ensure they are called to meetings where their solutions are promised that never arrive, as well as dog neuter surgeries that are never performed.
“We have become relaxed, as they say, because people leave here, leave the animals alone for four or five hours and in the end there is nothing left. They are promises. They tell us ‘collect the bills, find a lawyer who does this’ and they do their best, find the lawyer, organize the lawyer, we legalize the foundation, we have the RNC and all in vain, because in the end we have no help got it, ”he said. Ana Lucia complains.
WHAT DO YOU NEED?
Especially a vet who helps them with the animals, who takes care of them. To catch the animals that kill livestock and poultry in many communities, Yira points out that they need a vet to put the animals to sleep so they can catch them.
“We should give them something to eat with a sedative so that we could pick them up, cage them and castrate them later; give them something to calm them down, because the animal is aggressive because of the amount of pheromones that the body produces when they are not neutered, both female and male ”.
Ana Lucía adds that as a foundation they have many ideas that have worked in other countries “but we don’t have the resources to make those ideas a reality.”
“In the Dominican Republic there are no resources or a place to house dogs, so I think a viable and even much cheaper solution would be to set up spay campaigns for animals already on the street, because there are people in the neighborhoods. They do not mistreat them, that they are there and now they even throw food at them, so that those who are strong, those who are big, stay on the street so that they stop reproducing and the population does not keep growing ”.
If an institution wants to have a community sterilization day, Ana Lucía says so they can get the grounds, water for the volunteers and labor to work or catch the dogs.
“It would be difficult, but we know where the animals are. We have received complaints. If you have to look for them at night it is the least, we have some experience and we are not afraid of them. We even let ourselves be bitten to grab them. My brother says: ‘Where he bites me, you get him’ ”.
THEY BELIEVE THAT THE GOVERNMENT MAKES NO INTEREST
If the government’s animal protection policy has not worked so far, Ana Lucía believes it is because the government does not know it is important.
“They have not analyzed the importance of animals in education. They don’t know that a child who mistreats an animal in the future could be a criminal. These are studies that have been done, but no importance is attached to this. Children are not educated about the love for animals, or about the love for the environment ”.
His mother thinks that animal life has always been the same and that abuse is on the rise.
“When there is less awareness, there is more abuse. People used to fear God. Earlier it was noted from grandfather to grandson, from father to daughter, that the Lord who kicks a dog punishes him; that if you hurt a dog, if you drown it, you will die; that how you kill him so that you die ”.
The country’s animal advocates believed the situation would improve after the passage of Law 248-12 on Animal Protection and Responsible Ownership.
“I really think that while it is not the change that was expected, people are becoming aware. And the fact that the number of dogs on the street has increased means that people are afraid of attacking animals. People think about it because even after the cases of people who have managed to put them in jail and collect bail from them through social work, people are scared, ”says Yira.
“At least that’s news now, before it wasn’t even news,” adds Ana Lucía.
TERROR IN COMMUNITIES
The overpopulation of stray dogs in the southwest of the province of San Cristóbal, along the Sánchez highway, is no longer just a public health problem, but also an economic one.
In recent months, farmers and producers have denounced the slaughter of livestock and poultry.
Mrs. Rita Montás Domínguez, in Najayo Arriba, was recently killed by 22 peacocks, 23 geese and 7 pregnant sheep.
His neighbor, he tells Listín Diario, killed 9 pregnant goats and another was killed by all ducks and four goose eggs were eaten.
The dogs eat the eggs and just kill the animals, says Dona Rita.
Most of the animal attack takes place in about 8 kilometers in the communities of Nayajo Arriba, Santa Lucía de Camba, El 7, Doña Ana, La Javilla, La Sierra and Los tamarindos.
The problem got worse with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. This section of the road is usually one of the most used for dog and cat abandonment. The animals hide during the day and hunt at night.
Community members fear dogs will attack people.
For helps. If you want to cooperate with the Diakimyi foundation, look for them on social media or call them at (809) 528-3989 and (829) 343-9472. They also receive donations on account 1880 342 0018 of the BHD bank in the name of Ana Yira Ramírez.