Lost and Found [] Yo ❤️ Animalitos SMA

By Crystal Calderoni

It’s hard to believe almost one year ago we addressed the plight of San Miguel’s homeless street dogs with Mayor Trejo. He gave the green light to our proposals deemed crucial for a pet-friendly San Miguel. Caring for those without voices strengthens our community through compassion, bringing value to everyone’s day, and even filters down to tourism and our economy. As a result, in July, 2022 San Miguel’s Centro de Control Canino’s gates opened to dog lovers wanting to help.

Yo   Animalitos SMA, believes all animals should be treated with dignity and respect not collected like rubbish, hidden away, and euthanized. Our mission is to protect, advocate, provide care, comfort, and compassion for neglected, abandoned, surrendered, and abused animals. Animal welfare requires heavy lifting and in reflection meaningful change can only be accomplished with greater municipal and community participation.

What do we do? Each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday from 10am-1pm volunteers report for duty. Most dogs are lost pets who receive ten days lodging in crowded, dilapidated cells, bewildered and stressed. Most are not claimed and are euthanized to make room for new arrivals. Our team assess the dogs, cleans, feeds and grooms them. We walk, baby talk, and cuddle them while videos and photographs are taken. Healthy doses of unconditional love are exchanged and the marked changes in their demeanor and ours, is palpable. We make a difference if only for a day. After hours, media savvy volunteers post photos, videos, and details about the dogs and connect to various animal rescuers. A website would increase our outreach tremendously and the Mayor gave approval for a hyperlink on sanmigueldeallende.gob.mx home page so people can find their lost dogs and adopt new companions. Sadly as yet the link is not up and running.

We’ve made progress. Improvements by generous donors turned a muddy cavern with rats vs. dogs into a puppy house with a floor, roof, and a bodega for supplies. Two large corrals were erected as play space so dogs can be dogs. Many physical improvements are needed as the grass is truly greener over the septic tank and hopefully a vacant city building on the property may become a low cost vet clinic for spays and neutering, X-ray machine, offices, plus a toilet for the staff and guests. One can dream.

Yo   Animalitos is proud and determined to expand our services to dogs who are lost but not forgotten. With limited resources and grit we helped move over 90 dogs into veterinary care, foster and permanent homes. With greater community support and municipal leadership we will repair, provide comfort, and protect these precious souls from wind, rain, and cold while we focus on adoptions and preventions to reduce unnecessary euthanizations. It’s a race against time for the lost animales. Ten days to be exact. Join us for the love of it!

Yo ❤️ Animalitos

https://paypal.me/CrystalCalderoni?country.x=MX&locale.x=es_XC

https://www.facebook.com/groups/yoheartanimalitos

cpistolera@gmail.com

415 103 3764