It costs over €2000 a month to support the dogs currently being cared for at Live Arico. You can help and all you’ve got to do is get yourself to the Live Arico Benefit Night at The Theatre Bar at Garden City, San Eugenio on April 20th from 21:00 hrs and be entertained by the likes of Tanya Tevaro, Nick Page and  Suzy Q.

Go along, have fun and give what you can towards a very good cause.

Other Live Arico News:

25th April : Car boot Puerto Santiago

26th April :  Fun Dog Show Los Gigantes

June 2009 : Live Arico Annual Fun Dog Show, Costa del Silencio.

Call Eugenio 649001907 for information or info@livearico.org

If you have never seen a Presa Canario up close you have to imagine a dog the size of a small Shetland pony. They are large and impressive. As in fact are their poos.

Believe me, I know. I pick up enough of the damn stuff to open a fertilizer factory.

Now, Tito’s poo is one thing (as any parent can tell you, your own baby’s nappy is sweet-smelling compared to the toxic production of any other infant) but I draw the line at scooping up the poop of my neighbour’s presa – even if that dog is Tito’s brother and therefore some sort of distant four-legged relation.

I caught Orco pooing in my garden the other day. He was running about without a lead on, came to our door to have a good old nosey through the metal gate, which had both Tito and Skye going mental. Daft Tito was leaping about happily while Skye wanted to murder the interloper. In the melee, Tito’s ball rolled out the gate and Orco went to make off with it. As I went out to retrieve the ball (damn those dogs have me well trained!), Orco waltzed into the garden patch and left the most humungous jobbie. I was not impressed. Well, I was, I suppose, but there was no way I was cleaning that thing up.

I stamped round to Orco’s Dad’s house which is next-door-but-one and shouted up the stairs about the kaka in mi jardin (that’s not one you’ll find in the Sugar Sachet Spanish by the way) and he nodded and muttered that he’d clean it up.

Well the mountain of poo had gone by the next day and I thought no more about it. When I next saw the neighbour he passed me by quickly without saying hello and I thought that a bit churlish. I mean, your dog poo’d, you cleaned it up, get over it, you know? But anyway, I thought that was the last of it until in the middle of a Spanglish blether with my very-next-door neighbour, she admitted she’d seen the Orco incident and heard me complain to Mr. Next-Door-But-One. He hadn’t picked up the poo by the next day. So she did. Then she threw it on his stairs!

Do you think she attached a note saying from whence this bomb originated? Aaaah. No.

So now I am mortified! Mr. Next-Door-But-One thinks I slung poo on his stairs. I don’t know what to do. Should I pretend it never happen and be forever branded a kaka-slinging crackpot or should I land Mrs Very-Next-Door in the shit?

Here she is. This is the black schnauzer that was found roaming at the back of Ulla’s riding centre. She’s such a lovely girl but time is running out. The police are coming to pick her up again on Monday and I’m afraid that after that her future is looking bleak indeed.

Not surprisingly Ulla is pretty desperate to find the owners. Please if there is anyone who thinks they might know anything about this lost soul, phone Ulla now on 646807234.

Have you or anyone you know lost a big black schnauzer in the last two months or so in the South of Tenerife. If so, then she has been rescued off the hills at the back of Aldea Blanco and is currently being looked after by Ulla at the horse riding centre there. Unfortunately Ulla has several dogs of her own already and with all the horses and other animals she will not be able to keep this dog for long.

It is thought the dog comes from the Granadilla area. and if her owner is not found soon she will be taken by the council and most likely destroyed. If you know of anyone or can pass the message along in any way please help get this pup back where she belongs.

Presently I don’t have a photograph but I’ll try to get one by the weekend. In the meantime, you can call Ulla on 646807234

That bunch of big softies at Central Station Bar in Playa de Las Americas are hosting a Christmas bash for Live Arico dog shelter on Saturday 20th. Starting at 6:00pm there will be festive market stalls, raffles and live entertainment from a variety of well known entertainers on the island including apparently the winner of the 2008 Tenerife’s Got Talent, Charlie Karlsen.

Central Station’s own Jeff Stewart will be the compere and word is that he will be introducing some very hot acts alongside Charlie and his golden tonsils.

So don’t forget. Sat 20th, Central Station, 6.00 pm for festive fun in support of Live Arico.

It’s taken a while but I finally got round to joining Facebook and still don’t think I have quite got the hang of it. Though the social networking aspects of it are obvious it is all the peripheral add-ons that steal my time.

In the same week my Facebook friends introduced me to one video that was so beautiful it moved me to tears and to another whose very description was enough to tell me that it would move me to tears of an altogether different nature.

I hope you get as much joy out of Christian the Lion as I did and that you will take a moment to sign the Animal Saviours petition against the skinning alive of cats and dogs for the fur industry – even if you too can’t bring yourself to watch the video.