It’s heartbreaking for animal lovers to know that so many creatures that pass through animal shelters have to be put down because they can’t find suitable homes for all the homeless dogs and cats.
But for one woman, the idea of an animal being put down because no one wanted them was so horrific that she decided to do something about it herself. It all started when she visited a shelter in Costa Rica to buy dog food for her pets and found out that a 15-year-old dog named Diego had been left by his owner and was about to be put down.
Lya Battle immediately volunteered to take Diego. “They said, ‘No, he’s sick, he’s old,'” Battle said. “And I said, ‘It doesn’t matter if he lives a week. If he’s going to die, let him die having a home.’ I thought he would literally die within a week, but he actually held on, and he became our sweetest child for four more years. He got at least 19 or 20 years of life.”
However, there were hundreds of other dogs like Diego, and Battle quickly accumulated about 100 elderly or special needs dogs at her home with her husband. “I worked as I do right now, and Alvaro also helped with the costs through his different business affairs,” Battle said about how she and her husband paid to care for the dogs. “We literally took from wherever we had in order to keep them homed.”
However, when Battle inherited a 146-acre farm from her grandfather, they founded Territorio de Zaguates, hired some help, and moved the dogs to the farm where they could have plenty of space to thrive. Currently, they have somewhere between 600 and 700 dogs. “They come and go,” Battle said. “We’re always taking in more than we give out. At least the population is rotating. We also have a huge, huge senior citizen population.”
“No matter how hard it’s been, it’s always been worthwhile,” Battle said. “If something is terribly difficult, and it takes all you have — both materially and emotionally — but you still do it, that’s because you’ve found what really calls to you. If it were easy, everyone would do it, and if it were easy, it wouldn’t be as fulfilling.”
Would you be willing to take in hundreds of animals to save them from being euthanized? Let us know what you think in the comments below and please SHARE this with friends on Facebook.
[Featured image: Facebook/Lya Battle]
Woman Takes In Hundreds Of Unwanted Strays Set To Be Killed is an article from: LifeDaily