A WOMAN has told how she spent her life savings to rescue a puppy facing almost certain death on a Greek island.
Angie Walker faced a bill of £2,500 for vaccinations, quarantine and the transit of the puppy she found roaming a Corfu beach with a pack of wild dogs.
Since paying to bring the dog home to Durham she's had to take on part-time work to try and recover some of the cost.
After her story appeared in our sister paper The Northern Echo last week, Angie has been contacted by generous dog-owners and kennel owners who have donated food and kennel accommodation free of charge.
She felt compelled to rescue the five-month-old bitch, named Effie, after it attached itself to her while on holiday last October.
After learning of the fate of many wild dogs in Greece - after the holiday season they are routinely beaten to death, poisoned or shot - she had to act, despite the crippling cost.
Angie, of Claypath, Durham, said: "It used all my holiday money and I haven't got a ha'penny left of my life savings.
"Even though I'm pretty destitute now it's still worth it to have Effie here with me. However, when I worked out the full cost of bringing her back I nearly died."
After her holiday with her daughter and a friend, she left Effie with a Greek animal sanctuary run by an English woman, Maureen McNamera, and returned to Britain anticipating the full cost of the dog's transit coming to no more than a few hundred pounds.
Over the next four weeks the full cost of adopting foreign animals became apparent. She had to pay £140 then £1,500 for six months in quarantine, plus the cost of the flight and vets bills.
Sheila Gretton, her friend who accompanied her on holiday, paid around £800 to the total cost, but the remaining £1,700 has come out of Angie's pocket.
She added: "I had no choice because she really got under our skin. We heard so many horror stories about what happens to animals out there."
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