Dear Friends,

VSPCA asks for your heartfelt attention to our cause on behalf of our dearly loved 1000 animal friends at our shelter. As always the challenges are extraordinary and all these difficulties are borne by the animals. We speak for them only!

It’s been a year of hardship and achievement. Here are some of the highlights:

• Animal birth control (ABC) for dogs and protection for cats steadily increasing to outlying areas, cattle protection, sea turtle protection, wildlife rescues and shelter activities.
• Improving our education programmes with the breakthrough in conducting awareness/education to over 3000 police cadets members and also school children.
• Teams for protecting street cats and parrots from poachers setup on a permanent basis.
• Huge disaster relief effort for the worst flood in Andhra Pradesh in 100 years for animals and for people too (school children received sweaters). Read more in the Hindu.
• New cat shelter and new horse sheds built
• Successful but laborious and exhausting treatment of Foot and Mouth Disease afflicting our shelter animals.
• “Vegan Meals To The Poorest of The Poor” program to feed people a meal a day. This is to supplement the diet of the street people who also routinely share their food with the street animals, mostly dogs. These people who are already living on the roads with no shelter or possessions. The least we can do is try and feed them as well.

Just a few of our recent rescues:

	These cows were recently rescued. Please read about Pradeep Nath and his continuing lifelong efforts to protect cows.
Little was found nearly dead by the Beach Road, probably hit by a car. He has made a full recovery and due to his darling and friendly nature he is a real favorite and may become one of our Dr. Paw dogs.
	A fool left this sweetie in a drain to die, a good person rang us up to come and save him.
A former employee of VSPCA who was trained in animal abuse awareness spotted this python and phoned us. Prasad, our current VSPCA staff member, seized the python from the “entertainer” (man on left) who kept the snake always confined in the bag. In cases like this, we offer the offender a job at our shelter. It is illegal to confine wildlife and since the python was healthy we were able to release it unharmed into the nearby Kambalakonda Wildlife Sanctuary.
	Dr. Subhir, one of our five vets on staff, treating a rescued parrot for injuries.
Chintu is a Rhesus monkey seized from the “owner” who kept her locked away without much food. She is cute, nice and extremely loving. We will look for a group of Rhesus monkeys to be her new family but for now she needs our help – please consider sponsoring her or any of other needy animals.
	Bhim, who was greatly injured by a huge sword thrown from a butcher’s shop. He is recovering and will stay with us.

This past year we faced drought, floods, recession and rising prices. And now we face political upheavel in Andra Pradesh. Your support is vital to make it through these challenging times. Our operating expenses are depleted once again – will you please send us any amount for our destitute animals today?

We are so grateful for your support in 2009. Many blessings to you and yours for the holiday season and for 2010.

Pradeep Nath, President and Founder
Eileen Weintraub, volunteer for VSPCA outreach (USA)
and all of us at VSPCA.

Note: As we send you this update, our state of Andhra Pradesh, India is in turmoil. The national government appears poised to give in to popular demands to carve out a new state, Telangana, from the whole. How will VSPCA be affected? It will make our presence here more important, because our city, Visakhapatnam, will likely become the capital of the new state. For now, the violence and curfews will continue to hamper our work, for we are the only animal protection organization in the region and animals are always at exceptional risk in times of political upheaval. Bandhs (strikes) are hindering our normal activities and we are risking our lives to rescue animals in these extreme situations. We hope the situation calms down for the sake of all. More about the domestic situation here.

For frequent updates and links to many of the above stories please check our Facebook and Twitter feed.