Susie Brown: Re-elected as President of Adana at AGM

A unanomous vote from all the members have confirmed their total support for the current President and are very happy she will continue the great work her and her board are committed to doing.

Adana has many challenges throughout 2023, all of which we have overcome. We now have all the health and safety in place in all of the pens, the fences are all fixed and we have fantastic plans for further change in 2024. We have some great volunteers helping us with the maintenance and the upkeep of the shelter is now probably better than it has ever been.

We have made some other major changes and improvements within the structure of ADANA, We now have a wonderful new Lawyer called Julio Romero who at the time I approached him to come and work for ADANA, knew very little about us. That changed very quickly. He has and still is playing an instrumental part in fixing several of our problems which we have encountered but he is doing an amazing job.

The depuradora, which is our sewage system, was still not fully functioning. After months of frustration, emails and phone calls. Snr Romero, persuaded a representative of the company, to come from Barcelona, and have a meeting with the Board and staff and talk to us. This meeting turned out to be very successful and the depuradora will be fixed free of charge which is fabulous. There are a few other issues that need to be fixed and then we can continue with our Zoological license journey.

We also had to change our Gestor/ accountant They are called San Juan Asesorias.in Estepona. I would like to say that they have been a wonderful addition to us. They are very helpful, proactive and well up on all of the new rules and regulations. So we are now working a lot more efficiently than we have in the past.

We have taken on a new employee, her name is Karen, and they have made her transition into ADANA so easy for all of us. Also, Karen is a great asset to ADANA, she has a good work ethic, is very helpful to the other staff and Fernando is helping her with her Spanish so a win win all round.

As always, we have had many events going on through the year, and we really do work hard at making them all a success. None more so than our Christmas Fair. It takes at least three months of planning and organization. It was the best Christmas Fair that we have ever held. More people came through the door than ever before. The Board and volunteers worked so hard for this event to be a good one, and we were not disappointed. We have set the bar super high and now need to make this even bigger and better for Christmas 2024.

I'm sure everyone that follows ADAN had heard, in the Summer of last year, Estepona Police came to us with 34 dogs and puppies, which they had rescued from one house. The whole situation was appalling. We had to find places to put these poor souls in already full pens. As always our team were amazing and put their heart and soul into making these little dogs fit right in. They worked long extra hours at doing this and I was very proud of them. But the reality was, we now had 172 dogs and puppies living within the shelter.
Although many of those dogs and puppies have now been adopted, it doesn’t stop the arrival of about 30 new dogs each month, which brings our numbers right back up again. This can be extremely dangerous because over full pens can lead to fighting, injuries and even death. The adoptions have definitely slowed down, this can be due to many factors. New laws stating that we must insure all of our dogs, this is not cheap to do, vets bills are rising and the cost of living has risen dramatically. .
Finally I would like to say, that we recently gave a big thank you to all of the long term volunteers who have been such an amazing support to ADANA over the years. They are loving and kind, and everything they do is for the ADANA dogs. They do not look for any glory, and they are our heroes. It is impossible to honor them enough so I hope the love from the dogs they have helped over the years will be enough.

From everyone at ADANA we thankyou for supporting us and we look forward to a successful 2024.