Eco Hvar

Dog Rescues: How It All Began

Published in Animals

The story of how I became involved in animal rescue on the island, and why ECO HVAR for Animals came into being.

Eco Hvar for Animals Eco Hvar for Animals Vivian Grisogono

It all started in September 2004 with Babe, the dog who should have been a rose. My Croatian isn't that good, despite my being a member of Dalmatia's oldest surviving noble family. But it wasn't due to linguistic failings that I set out to buy a rose and came back with a black labrador called Babe. The scorn that was heaped on me for my poor grasp of the language after this incident was unjust. No, I wasn't looking for a dog-rose. And rescuing Babe wasn't all my fault either. 

It happened like this: my distant relative Igor Skelin runs Jelsa's garden centre, a place where one could buy plants, including roses, but not dogs. Babe belonged to Branko, one of Igor’s staff, and was generally to be found in the hot-house sitting quietly under the table or wandering around, causing no trouble to anyone. She was a beautiful, nicely mannered and contented dog, as labradors tend to be.

babe-may-05

On this particular Saturday morning she was sitting under the table looking unusually morose. No sign of Branko, so I asked after him. Igor told me that he was very ill in hospital, and had asked Igor to find Babe a good home or have her put down. Babe had been in the care of one of Branko’s relatives, but had run off and gone missing for several days. Today she had reappeared at the garden centre, totally unexpectedly.

The news was a shock. I digested it for a few moments. I had a sense of some inescapable destiny. I looked at my brother, another Branko. He looked at me. Dog-lovers both, the pulling on heart-strings was almost audible. We had a short silent consultation, and he willed me forward. Easy enough for him, he would be leaving shortly for the UK, leaving me holding the Babe. “Well,” I said slowly, “If you really can’t find her a home, let me know, perhaps I…” Igor was on the case like a shot. Announcing that there was no chance of anyone else taking her on, he opened the car door and Babe hopped inside.

Roses were forgotten and we headed off home. I was musing, rather late in the day, on whether Babe would fit in. I had brought with me two dogs from the UK when I had relocated to Dalmatia earlier in 2004. They were both females, and used to having their territory to themselves. How would they take to the new arrival? Would they fight? And what’s more, one was called Beba, there could be a confusion of identities. The chain of command would be difficult to maintain. Oh dear. My low spirits sank another notch when Bella and Beba greeted our arrival with resounding hostile barking.

To my surprise, all went well. The barking subsided when the two realized Babe was coming in. Babe entered, there were introductions all round, tails wagged, and she settled in without a hitch. Perhaps Bella and Beba recognized a kindred spirit, as their mother Connie was a labrador, albeit golden rather than black. Babe lived on happily for several years in Pitve, and eventually died naturally and peacefully in her sleep. Happily her former owner Branko recovered from his illness and returned to the island, although he was unable to take Babe back.

So began the influx of canine intruders into our peaceful home in Pitve. And, yes, my Croatian has improved in the interim. No, I have not set out to buy a rose since. But every year there are homeless or unwanted dogs wandering around the island, and I have taken in as many of them as I could manage at any given time. Sadly, I have been forced to leave even more to their fate.

 

There are just too many unwanted dogs being born on the island, or in some cases being brought here. There is no organization on the island responsible for caring for these poor animals. It seems this is a problem throughout Dalmatia. The obvious thing to do was to establish a framework in order to carry out projects which would address the problems. This is how ECO HVAR for Animals, now a registered charity, was born.

© Vivian Grisogono 2013

UPDATE 2024. Over the intervening years, the situation has improved. Tthere is still no Animal Shelter for unwanted dogs or cats on the island, so we are very limited in what we can do. However, the revised Law on Animal Protection (Zakon o zaštiti životinja NN 102 /2017) which came into force in October 2017 has made a difference: local authorities are now obliged to take greater action for animal welfare. This has helped the work of Charities like ours. In particular, we have benefited from the excellent services provided by the Bestie Foundation which is responsible for the Animalis Centrum Animal Shelter in Kaštel Sućurac. Much remains to be done, so please support us, in whatever way you can!

HELP IS ALWAYS NEEDED!

The Bestie Foundation for the Protection of Animals has proved essential for our work of helping animals in need on Hvar, and of course they serve a very wide area across the Split-Dalmatia County. This is a special appeal in aid of the Foundation:

Twelve good reasons to help the Bestie Animal Protection Foundation

HELP THE BESTIE ANIMAL PROTECTION FOUNDATION

PLEASE DONATE!

Details for donations:

Via the bank:
Zaklada Bestie
Kukuljevićeva 1, 21000 Split
Otp banka
IBAN: HR9324070001100371229
SWIFT: OTPVHR2X

Paypal donate button: https://www.paypal.me/ZakladaBestie

 

 

Related items

back to top
You are here: Home animal articles Dog Rescues: How It All Began

Eco Environment News feeds

  • Europe heatwave live: UK temperatures forecast to reach 38C after overnight storms; France has hottest night since records began

    Temperatures could smash June record in England and Wales set in 1976; French PM to hold emergency meeting after heat deaths

    Italy’s health ministry has declared a red heatwave alert in 15 cities including Milan and Rome on Tuesday and said the number would go up to 16 on Wednesday.

    During a red alert – the highest level – the ministry advises people to eat light, stay indoors in the hottest parts of the day and sprinkle themselves with cool water.

    Continue reading...

  • Remembering summer 1976: how the historic heatwave has become our new normal

    Half a century on, Britain braces for temperatures up to 40C as global heating brings yet more extreme weather

    The summer of 1976 is seared into national memory as one of record heat. Harvests failed, farmers despaired, Britain imported an extra million tonnes of grain, food prices rose by 12%, taps ran dry, and each day, 250 people died from heat-related deaths.

    The heatwave, which began 50 years ago on Tuesday, brought 15 consecutive days on which the peak temperature was above 32C. Half a century later and 32C no longer feels shocking.

    Continue reading...

  • Clean economy brings jobs and growth, says Miliband as £100bn invested in green energy

    Energy secretary hails £100bn milestone in this parliament and says it is ‘only the start of what we want to achieve’

    Ed Miliband has hailed a boost to UK jobs and growth as government data reveals that private sector companies have pledged more than £100bn in investment into the green economy so far in this parliament.

    Offshore wind, solar power and the electricity grid make up the bulk of the planned investment, most of it between 2024 and 2031, which will go to all regions of the UK and comes from a mixture of UK companies and overseas sources including the EU and Japan.

    Continue reading...

  • A thousand years old and 20 storeys high: tracking down Taiwan’s tallest trees

    The country’s biggest tree – named Heaven Sword of the Da’an River – is a carbon-storing behemoth hosting whole neighbourhoods of wildlife. But this and other giant trees are under threat

    The higher you climb up the gigantic, millennia-old trees of Taiwan’s forests, the more layers of habitat and life emerge. On the forest floor, ferns thrive in the moist shade. Flying squirrels and owls sleep inside the hollow tree trunks. Yellow bell-shaped rhododendron flowers spring from the lower tree canopy. Higher still, dense lichen spread. Up in cloud-drenched branches, a rare, hardy orchid, Bulbophyllum ciliisepalum, can be spotted.

    “In one tree, every species has their preferred location,” says Dr Rebecca Hsu, assistant researcher at the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute. “Every metre the temperature, the wind, the sun, the light is different.”

    Continue reading...

  • Country diary: Birds of a feather in a noisy argument | Mary Montague

    Queen’s University, Belfast:The corvids in the branches above me spring a surprise – there’s a black crow among them

    The rain hurries me to shelter at the woods’ edge, but I’m scarcely under the branches of a mature sycamore when the canopy starts to thrash. Abrasive voices erupt from the foliage as a rabble of crows dispute. One leaps into a gap between the leaves, crouching, its ash-grey body low over a branch and fanning its black tail. The throat inflates to bray the bird’s anger. In response, the object of its fury hops on to the branch above it, all the while giving as good as it gets. Something niggles me about that one – I squint, then blink in surprise. It’s a black crow.

    As a bookish youngster growing up in rural County Fermanagh, it took a while for me to grasp that the crows I encountered in real life were not, in fact, black. The hooded or grey crow is the common crow across all of Ireland. With its two-tone livery of grey torso and black extremities, it’s a handsome bird. The “hoodie” is also found in the north of Scotland. The closely related all-black carrion crow is a far more familiar sight throughout the rest of Britain, with sparse numbers along the east coast of Northern Ireland.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘Emotional and horrific’: volunteers ‘live’ as Somerset animals to study wildlife risks

    People trained to experience world as otters, salmon and other River Tone creatures for pioneering research

    What does a kestrel make of the dog sniffing in the long grass below? Why does an exhausted salmon pause before a weir? How will an otter experience the rumble of a passing train?

    Eighteen people have spent six weeks swimming, slithering and soaring as otters, salmon, earthworms, red deer and kestrels in an attempt to better document the risks for wild animals in our human-dominated landscape.

    Continue reading...

  • Starmer has a strong green record – but a rightwing backlash weakened his plans

    Prime minister was forced to row back on some policies despite strong support among voters for climate action

    Keir Starmer has faced a problem no Labour government has needed to deal with before. His energy and climate policies – core to solving the cost of living crisis – have come under attack from opposition parties, which have made dismantling the agenda one of their top priorities, second only to immigration, in their pitch to voters.

    This is new in British politics, where a cross-party consensus on the climate and environment has held at least since the days of Margaret Thatcher. She warned the UN of the climate crisis in 1988; David Cameron in 2006 urged voters to “vote blue, go green”; Theresa May enshrined in law the requirement to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; Boris Johnson championed the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in 2021; even Rishi Sunak only tried a partial rollback of green policies as a last desperate throw before calling an election.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘Climate change is a form of oppression’: the voices affected most by environmental crisis

    In HBO documentary The Welcome Table, director Josh Fox brings together people from across the world whose lives have been dramatically altered by the climate crisis

    In an age of division, director Josh Fox is hoping to bring people of all kinds together. Specifically, he wants them to share a table – to break bread for a meal, and come together in exuberant song.

    In his new documentary film The Welcome Table, the director of the the Emmy-winning Gasland travels around the world to talk to people at the leading edge of global warming’s effects. The film is part stark warning of the climate crisis, part opportunity to enter into the experience of those living in the corners of the globe. It culminates with the sounds of these individuals together at an enormous table in New Orleans, eating and rejoicing.

    Continue reading...

  • Goodbye, pilates princess – hello, gym goblin: how the just-got-out-of-bed look took over fitness

    The colour-coordinated ‘clean girl’ athleisure aesthetic is dead. Now it’s all about mismatched outfits and vintage sportswear

    At first, the goblins came for our downtime. Going “goblin mode” was a lifestyle confined to the home – to the bed, mostly. The “comforts of depravity” it brought (“watching 90 Day Fiancé on mute while scrolling endlessly through social media, pouring the end of a bag of chips in your mouth”, for example) weren’t compatible with doing anything productive.

    Enter the gym goblin. The optics remain much the same – think ancient T-shirts, knackered socks, oversized cardigans – but the setting has changed, with goblincore devotees rising up from unmade beds, Diet Cokes in hand, to hit the treadmill. It’s Diana, Princess of Wales’s oversized college sweatshirts meets Josh O’Connor’s half-tracksuit look for the Disclosure Day press tour – and the polar opposite of the matcha-drinking, Lululemoned “clean girl” aesthetic that dominates fitness circles.

    Continue reading...

  • Piglet, it’s a purple, psychedelic shapeshifter! The wild new creature prowling Winnie-the-Pooh’s wood

    Is it an alien? A dinosaur? Is it going to kill us all? Our writer hits Ashdown Forest for the Big One Hundred celebrations – and finds its magic enchanting new generations

    The rolling idyll of heath and forest, spinney and stream that gave us the Heffalump, the Woozle and, most famously of all, Winnie-the-Pooh, has a new fantastical resident. Creeping through the bracken, making strange cooing and purring noises, is a shapeshifting creature with a huge tubular nose and eyes inspired by adders. It shimmies with iridescent patches and the psychedelic purple of flowering heather in high summer.

    Poppet, a puppet made by costume designer Jack Irving and brought to life by a team of 10 award-winning puppeteers, is performing for schoolchildren in Ashdown Forest, East Sussex. The primary school class squeal with delighted fear as the purple apparition transforms itself from caterpillar to bird to munching monster in sinuous moves.

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds

Copyright © 2026 Eco Hvar. All Rights Reserved. Developed by Orion Informatika.