An animal shelter called Galkino Podvorje ( which means Galkins Yard if translated from Russian) came under my radar and under the wing of the foundation in 2016. Since then we were trying to help them all the time. Its current premises are overcrowded, with no proper facilities and it is quite unpleasant to visit.

Earlier this year, director of the foundation, Olga Vatomskaja, managed to secure a long term lease on a beautiful piece of land with a building on it perfectly suitable for the shelter. This place will be big enough to provide a loving temporary home for 70 dogs and 30 cats.

Current state of the building is quite bad however it is habitable and some of the rescued dogs were already moved. A lot of volunteers are joining in to help hands on over the weekend - painting , decorating, building , installing etc. The shelter is also getting their building materials donated as well as kind people are donating whatever they can towards this project.

I have been involved in this project and with rescuing dogs in Russia for over 3 years. It is painful to see how animals get treated in Russia and what it takes to get one of those once neglected dogs a loving home.

We have decided that we will try and renovate our shelter with our own resources and slowly campaign for donations. However what we have realised is that even if we manage to get some money together for the improvements around new shelter, our donations are absorbed by high medical bills. We cant stop taking new residents in just because we are renovating, as otherwise these poor creatures will not survive. However this significantly slowing us down and means slowing us from rescuing some more and finding homes for others.

I , and all of our team , therefore would like to plead for some help with building a medical room in this shelter. This means a massive saving to our shelter as most of our costs are medical bills. This means we will be able to save more animals from the streets where they are targeted to be killed either by the government scheme or by cruel human beings.

£2,500 will enable us to build a whole medical room , where our animals will get all of the emergency help they need, as we will be able to buy all of the equipment we will need. Also we will be able to treat and sterilise our pets with our in house vet - saving each months thousands of Rubles ( hundreds of pounds) .

With that we will be able to complete renovation of the shelter a lot quicker. This animal shelter will be first, one of a kind in Russia. It will aim to educate people about kindness towards dogs and cats, it will be first ever people friendly animal shelter in Russia. We are setting to make a history with it.

Would you please help me? Please join us in this remarkable journey.