Turkey – a beautiful land with many interesting sights, sun, sea, sand, stunning scenery and the friendliest, most hospitable people. We quickly settled on Turkey as our holiday destination in 2002, we wanted to revisit Turkey, and especially Istanbul, the mysterious city on the Bosporus. Apart from the well known tourist attractions we had another destination on our list: the SHKD shelter.

As the proud owners of a former stray from Spain, where just as in Turkey the fate of many dogs is a sorry one, we feel very drawn to what the AAI foundation in the Netherlands does for Turkish and Spanish dogs. This is why we volunteered to bring a few dogs back on the plane with us for whom AAI had found new homes. And since we were going to be in Istanbul anyway we wanted to see for ourselves the shelter that AAI supported.

We were made very welcome there; Doruk, the Turkish contact for AAI took us to the shelter. It was founded by the English businessman Robert Smith, and is quite a drive outside Instanbul. On the way Doruk stopped: a big dog, already dead sadly, in the middle of the road, - the victim of a hit-and-run, something which happens all too often. Doruk dragged the dog to the side of the road and called the shelter to say exactly where the dog lay, so that he could be removed. It forced us to face reality immediately.

Finally we were there. In the chaotic office we met Selma and a couple of the residents: Cappi with three legs, Zorro, 6 months old with problems in his rear legs due to a calcium deficiency, an aged Pekinese who was due to go to Germany that weekend, and Polly with her beautiful eyes and paralyzed rear end. All these dogs had a handicap and so were allowed to be around the building so that they weren’t art risk from the group of stronger dogs. What was immediately apparent was how friendly they were even with total strangers.

And then we went to the outside runs. Goodness, so many dogs, we hadn’t reckoned on so many. There were several hundred!!! By every run we came to 10 to 15 dogs jumped at the fence to lick our hands, all longing for a little attention: most were super friendly. We couldn’t believe our eyes, all those dogs to see, and cuddle. We kept saying to each other “look that one is great!” “See that one, oh what a sweet looking dog!”

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