Year End Report

2008 was quite a memorable year for all of us, full of moments of great hardship, yet also great hope. As the beginning moments of the New year settle in, we hope you’ll find time to read about our accomplishments over the past 12 months, celebrating along with us each victory scored in the battle against animal suffering in Mexico.

Another day, Another spay.....
Compassion without Borders remains committed to providing free spay and neuter to the animals of Mexico – the only effective way to decrease the number of unwanted animals and their immense suffering that is so rampant south of the border.

In 2008, we continued operation of our stationary free clinic in Juarez, Mexico – sterilizing over 3,500 animals this past year alone. The centrally located clinic also offers treatment for common illnesses and vaccinations.

2008 was also the year we opened up our wellness and sterilization clinic in Anapra, Mexico –a very impoverished community along the Mexican side of the El Paso-Mexico border. The clinic provides free vaccinations, deworming, flea and tick control, and sterilization surgeries to the animals of Anapra. We also offer treatment for a common venereal disease in this region, which causes painful tumors and can be lethal if left untreated. Additionally, we provide free food, collars, and leashes.
Click here for a full project description.

Our spay camp odysseys continued in’08, as we traveled to several different communities with US volunteers working alongside Mexican locals to provide high quality, free sterilization and wellness surgeries to the animals. Over 350 animals were sterilized at our 2008 spay camps.
Click here for more on our 2008 spay camps.

CWOB also helped to spread spay and neuter through Mexico by sending our trained Mexican veterinarians to help train vets in other regions, such as Agua Prieta where a locally based spay/neuter program is currently being set up. We also had the local vets from Agua Prieta travel out to California to train with CWOB cofounder Dr.Christi Camblor, as well as to Juarez to train with Dr. Juan Jose Martinez at the stationary clinic.

Continuing to save lives....
Rescue is a sincere passion for all of us at CWOB, enabling us to directly save the lives of individual animals and ensure they are nurtured, healed, and adopted out into loving homes. Our rescue gives us the hope and joy we need to carry out all of our work and also saves hundreds upon hundreds of precious lives.

In 2008 we saved scores of dogs who would otherwise been left to languish or die south of the border – bringing hope, love, and compassion to animals who are truly in need. These animals are rescued, given medical care and lots of nurturing, placed in a voluntary quarantine and then transported in our CWOB rescue van to northern California where they are adopted out by our partner organizations.
For more on our rescue, click here

Humane Euthanasia – Ensuring dignity even in their final moments

Tragically, we are still at a point where the humane euthanasia of animals in Mexico is still a grotesque necessity: adoption is unheard of in most regions, spay and neuter inaccessible for the majority of animals, and life on the streets harsh, unforgiving, and brutal for the thousands upon thousands of animals born into each day.

Even more tragic is that the main method of killing unwanted animals in Mexico is electrocution – which is brutal, inaccurate, and barbaric. CWOB firmly believes that all animals deserve a dignified, humane, quick, and pain-free death and has worked hard to achieve this goal by implementing humane euthanasia via intravenous injection throughout Mexico.

In 2008, we continued our humane euthanasia trainings, providing the supplies and oversight necessary for the entire state of Chihuahua, Mexico to completely eradicate electrocution. We also helped to convert an animal control center in the neighboring state of Sonora, Mexico and fully intend to keep working until we’ve eradicated the practice from the entire country.

For more on our humane euthanasia programs, click here.

Project Anapra: Bringing Hope to the Hopeless
2008 was the first full year for Project Anapra – an innovative program aimed at bringing about true change and humane reform for animals living in one of the most impoverished regions of Mexico – a suburb of Ciudad Juarez called Anapra.

The project blossomed from a biweekly wellness clinic at first, to a two day a week clinic that offers free sterilization and wellness services. This project truly offers hope and positive change to animals in a region where starvation, death by preventable disease, and horrific suffering are the norm for the vast majority. We hope to use this project as a model program, which can be implemented in other developing countries worldwide.

For more on Project Anapra click here.