Cristina Cristache - a lone fighter in deepest Transylvania, Romania - is the reason why this association exists. She is not only an animal-loving, self-sacrificing animal rights activist, but also a great person, so we decided to support her.
Cristina is over 60 years old and unfortunately completely on her own in her fight against animal suffering in her village. She lives on a spacious property with 10 large free-range enclosures. No animal has to be confined to a few square meters, they can all move freely within their enclosures, play and relax.

Even though Cristina does everything she can to ensure that her four-legged friends - currently around 135 dogs and 30-40 cats - are doing well, you can never compare the conditions in a Romanian shelter with the comfort and care of a German shelter. If our animal shelters are now reaching their limits, the Romanian shelters have been far beyond their limits for years.

This is also the case for Cristina: when she started rescuing street dogs over 15 years ago, she would never have thought that she would have to care for this many animals every day. Cristina also pushes herself beyond her limits every day, because distributing food and water for over 130 animals in ten enclosures alone is an extreme physical challenge. She has been trying for years to reduce the number of animals by placing them in Germany - and many of her dogs have already been given a new, happy life with warm baskets. But castration is still very rare in Romania, and so the yard and street dogs continue to produce puppies. If the owners cannot afford them, they are dumped in the garbage, on the side of the road or in parking lots. The same happens with old and sick animals.

Of course, Cristina brought these five little puppies to safety. They were just four to five weeks old and were lying in her driveway in temperatures of over 30 degrees Celsius. A week later, she found the next bag with five more puppies in the same place. Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there.

As soon as she takes new dogs into her shelter, she separates them as best she can. Whether young or older, the animals are first nursed up and vaccinated promptly.

But of course Cristina doesn't just have to look after the animals, she also has to attend vet appointments, maintain the property so that it doesn't become a jungle, look after and clean the premises - particularly difficult with puppies - and take care of her personal affairs from time to time. All of this would actually be a three-man job, but she is a one-woman show and does a fantastic job.

We, the Rescued Souls association, want to at least take the worry of food, vaccinations and neutering off her hands. We are also aiming to be allowed to place dogs at some point in order to further reduce the population and take the pressure off Cristina.

Please help us to help Cristina. We are dependent on donations to be able to feed Cristina's animals, provide them with veterinary care and castrate them - one of the most important pillars of animal welfare.

A few impressions from Cristina's Shelter