You’ve probably read the story of Glenn who was abandoned and left to die (Emaciated and covered in Cuts and Scrapes). Well, we thought you would like to see a photograph of him now compared to the condition he was in when we found him.

Glenn still receives extra feed which has been softened for him to eat due to the fact he has few teeth and the ones he has are all over the place. His skin condition is much better and he only has a few areas where there is little hair. As it seems to be an immune system problem, he occasionally gets a little outbreak of flaky skin and we then give him some medication to help clear it up as best as possible.

It’s always interesting to see a donkey’s personality come out after they have arrived at the sanctuary and the staff at Vouni know all the donkeys well! Since we moved donkeys to our two Holding Bases, certain personalities seemed to have become even bigger.

It all started at the Sterako HB, our first one, when the owner of the property, Tommy, took his truck into one of the paddocks to do some work. He had been doing this for a while with no problem until the donkeys decided that when Tommy was out of the way they would try out the wiper blades! They managed to remove them quicker than any mechanic and trotted off around the field with Tommy in hot pursuit. After a few replacement wiper blades, this game became boring so the next thing to try were the wing mirrors!

Over the last month or so we have been contacted by 5 Cypriot TV companies to come and do some filming and find out more about the sanctuary and the work we do. This is great news for us as more people across the island will be aware of our work.

We have also had several schools come to visit us of varying ages and nationalities. Its fascinating to watch the children’s faces when they are shown the pictures we have of long hooves as well as the donkey teeth we have. They are amazed to hear how the donkeys have their teeth checked twice a year and their hooves are made of the same type of fibre as their hair and nails!

We would really like to expand this area of our work as very often what the children learn relates to all animals and this will impact on many areas of animal welfare. What we are hoping that we can raise some funds to make a small mobile corral so that we could take a donkey or two to many schools that are unable to get to us.

If you would like to help us educate children, then please make a donation, no matter how small, to us here. If you prefer to send UK Sterling then please send to The Donkey Sanctuary, Sidmouth, Devon EX10 0NU

On 24th and 25th of March we moved 30 of our donkeys to our new second Holding Base. Following the success of our first Holding Base which was completed 10 months ago and now has 36 donkeys, a second site was found towards the end of last year. The land owner has put a great deal of effort into creating a lovely flat, well fenced area. We have constructed two large, well ventilated barns that have rubber matting on the floors, new feed troughs and a store area.

Out of all of The Donkey Sanctuary Sidmouth’s European organisations, Donkey Sanctuary (Cyprus) has the highest percentage of old donkeys. Over 70% are over 20 and half of those are over 25!. Narky and Lofou are our oldest and are both well into their 40s! A lot of the donkeys that come into the sanctuary were working donkeys still used in the hill villages. It’s not only the donkeys that get older, the owners do too and relinquish them to us as they are unable to look after them anymore..

Another 10 donkeys we were able to move from our Sanctuary to our Holding Base at Sterako, not far from Vouni, Limassol on Wednesday 27th January. Even though we are in the heart of the winter, the weather was very kind to us and the transportation was done smoothly without the rain ruining our precious work!

We started early in the morning at 8am, one or two donkeys were not sure what was happening so were a little difficult to get onto our horse trailers for transportation. But all in all they went on very well. After three trips to Sterako the job was completed at midday.

I have just returned from visits to all our operations in Europe and although tired am very happy to report that in every project we are expanding our work to help more donkeys either through rescue, education or in fact any means available to us. As well as Cyprus we are also working in Spain, Italy, France, Romania, Portugal and Albania. So that we can help as many donkeys as possible in different areas, we are setting up what we call licensed holding bases in remote locations so that we can provide care where it is needed.