From just five dogs to over 500 animals
Lielo Clauberg-Kranendonk is the only surviving founder of Canil de São Francisco de Assis in Loulé, opened in 1983 to help stray, abandoned and mistreated animals in the Algarve.
For nearly 42 years, Canil de São Francisco de Assis has provided a refuge for animals in need in the Algarve. Founded by a multicultural group of friends in the early 1980s, the Loulé-based kennel has taken in and cared for thousands of animals over the past decades.
The only living founder of the kennel and its managing charity – Associação dos Amigos dos Animais do Algarve (AAAA) – is Lielo Clauberg-Kranendonk, an 85-year-old German-Portuguese animal lover and former bank manager who moved from Germany to the Algarve at the start of the 1970s, having later worked at Vale do Lobo resort.
The seeds for the kennel’s creation were sown when a group of friends came together to sterilise a handful of animals in the municipalities of Albufeira and Loulé towards the end of the 1970s. “It was very difficult. We could only sterilise females,” Lielo told the Resident, explaining that there was still an idea among large portions of the local population that animals should be “kept whole”.
To help provide more credibility to their efforts, the friends founded the AAAA association on June 25, 1981, and raised enough money to purchase a plot of land in Campinas de Baixo, near Loulé, to begin building a kennel, which opened on February 19, 1983.
“We started out with just five dogs,” says Lielo. “We’d go out to help animals from Vila Real de Santo António all the way to Sagres, without the A22 motorway or mobile phones … I don’t know how we did it!”
Little by little, the number of animals in the kennel’s care grew from 50 to the over 500 it cares for today.
Like any animal charity, raising enough money for their efforts was a constant concern, and the kennel was lucky enough to be supported by several friends and animal lovers. “I believe we were the first animal association to host a charity golf tournament in the Algarve, on June 7, 1984,” Lielo says. This was just one of the ways that the kennel acted as a trailblazer for other animal associations in the Algarve. While nearly every town in the region has some form of animal association or charity set up these days, this was not the case back in the early 1980s.
“The local community in general was not the most supportive when we first started,” Lielo laments, stressing however that it did receive support from the municipal council and some local animal lovers. However, most of the support came from friends from outside of Portugal.
Over the years, public attitudes began to shift, giving the kennel a new wave of support.
“Those were very tough years, but it was also very rewarding to have been able to help so many animals,” she adds.
Due to her age and reduced mobility, Lielo has taken a more supportive role in the association, although she remains a mentor and a leader for the many workers and volunteers at Canil de São Francisco de Assis.
Sílvia Sousa started out as a volunteer, having eventually been hired to join as a full-time employee. “I was working at a store that closed down and was thinking about what I should do next. When I was offered the job at the kennel, I was uncertain at first. But my brother encouraged me to take it. It was something I loved doing, that I did for free…”
While dealing the daily life of a kennel can be heartbreaking – Silvia says she used to cry almost every day at first seeing the animals ‘beg’ for love and affection – the payoff is more than worth it, she says.
The kennel continues to rely on support from volunteers and donations to continue caring for the 500-plus animals in its care which include dogs, cats and even horses. The kennel also partners with Animalife, an NGO which helps carry out solidarity campaigns with big retail outlets such as Kiwoko and supermarket chains such as Continente or Pingo Doce.
According to volunteer Luís Raso, the kennel could also use some help with renovations as some facilities are rundown or in need of repairs. “Any company willing to help out with the renovations would be welcome, we’d appreciate it more than just receiving the money and hiring someone,” he told us.
Anyone interested in making donations, volunteering or adopting one of the animals in the kennel’s care can contact Canil de São Francisco de Assis at +351 289 416 862 or canil.sfa@sapo.pt. Donations by bank transfer can be made to the following account: IBAN: PT50 0007 0247 0007 7000 0046 3
By MICHAEL BRUXO
