All over the world, countless animals lead a miserable existence in overcrowded shelters or struggle for survival in feral colonies. Even today, animals deemed a nuisance are abandoned, deported, or kept improperly due to a lack of knowledge. The Susy Utzinger Foundation for Animal Welfare uses effective methods to help reduce or even prevent animal suffering in Switzerland and many other countries.
This animal welfare work is based on four pillars:
1. Competence Center for Animal Shelters: Animal shelters are becoming high-quality transitional stations for homeless animals, where animals are kept and cared for in a species-appropriate manner and ultimately placed in good new homes.
2. Castration campaigns: To curb animal suffering
3. Training and further education of skilled workers: Professionals are given the opportunity to optimize their knowledge and provide improved animal welfare.
4. Public education: Animal love with heart and mind
These four elements form the important basis for sustainable animal welfare projects.
Immediate aid as a basis for sustainable animal welfare projects: This is how animal lives are saved.
Those animals that have not yet benefited from the effects of this reconstruction work and were born into a world where they are not wanted need the immediate help of SUST.
SUST provides this help in the form of emergency operations, food deliveries, social assistance for animals, and through SUST animal orphan hospitals: Here, injured,
Sick and abandoned street animals are given refuge and receive urgently needed veterinary care and attention.
Social assistance for animals: For pets belonging to impoverished pet owners, SUST offers free food and regular veterinary consultations at greatly reduced rates at various locations in Switzerland.
All over the world, countless animals lead a miserable existence in overcrowded shelters or struggle for survival in feral colonies. Even today, animals deemed a nuisance are abandoned, deported, or kept improperly due to a lack of knowledge. The Susy Utzinger Foundation for Animal Welfare uses effective methods to help reduce or even prevent animal suffering in Switzerland and many other countries. This animal welfare work is based on four pillars:
The Susy Utzinger Foundation for Animal Welfare provides immediate/direct assistance to animals in need: Animals in distress receive expert help through this emergency aid. Street animals find refuge and rescue in the SUST's animal orphanages.
Building on this important foundation, SUST expands its sustainable animal welfare work on four pillars:
1. Competence Center for Animal Shelters: Animal shelters are becoming high-quality transitional stations for homeless animals, where animals are kept and cared for in a species-appropriate manner and ultimately placed in good new homes.
The Susy Utzinger Foundation for Animal Welfare is continuously active: With professional planning and impactful on-site interventions, it supports and promotes animal shelters both in Germany and abroad. Optimizing an animal shelter and setting it on the path to professional animal care usually requires years of collaboration and support. SUST teams work directly in the shelters for days or even weeks at a time. They participate in the daily operations of the shelters, evaluate organizational and structural issues, and can thus address the ideal way to improve the shelters: be it a complete renovation, providing first aid to animals, reorganizing processes, or even distributing food donations. The material collection campaign, which ran from 2002 to 2020, was transformed into an online animal welfare marketplace at the end of 2020, ensuring that well-preserved and functional animal supplies can continue to be donated to shelters in need.
2. Castration campaigns: To curb animal suffering
Hundreds of thousands of stray dogs and cats struggle to survive in many countries. Countless numbers are captured, and many languish in appalling conditions while unwanted kittens are constantly being born. The suffering of unwanted dogs and cats is immense in many countries. Neutering is the only way to control the overpopulation of stray animals in a sustainable and humane manner. Thousands of dogs, cats, and other animals have already been neutered by the Susy Utzinger Foundation for Animal Welfare in various countries. This measure has prevented countless unwanted kittens from ever being born. Such actions have a future: no more emaciated mother animals on the streets, no more famine, and no more sexually transmitted diseases that cause animals to die miserably. When the number of stray animals is reduced, cruel treatment of unwanted, "nuisance" animals ceases: no more poisoning, no more beatings to death, no more shootings. In this way, animal suffering is slowed, slowly but steadily and sustainably. SUST supports and continuously carries out castration projects in various countries.
3. Training and further education of skilled workers: Professionals are given the opportunity to optimize their knowledge and provide improved animal welfare.
"Let's tackle the problem at its root" is the guiding principle of the Susy Utzinger Foundation for Animal Welfare. In addition to optimizing animal shelters and spay/neuter campaigns in Switzerland and many other countries, the training and continuing education of veterinarians, animal welfare activists, and private animal lovers is a key pillar of this philosophy. Animal welfare activists learn fundamental principles for handling and caring for animals and for managing animal shelters. Veterinarians are brought up to date on the latest spay/neuter techniques by internationally recognized colleagues in their own countries and learn new and important information for carrying out such campaigns. This lays the foundation for further successful animal welfare projects that meet the quality standards demanded by the SUST (Swiss Foundation for Animal Welfare): Animal welfare activists and other professionals tackle animal welfare problems not only with great care but also with extensive expertise, thus enabling long-term solutions. This is how we achieve what we have set as our goal for our animal welfare work: The problem is tackled at its root! The SUST also participates in the planning and construction of training facilities.
4. Public education: Animal love with heart and mind
Expertise is essential for animal welfare. For this reason, the animal welfare professionals at SUST continuously incorporate their expertise and years of experience in handling companion animals into the information series "Animal Welfare Through Correct Action." These free brochures offer pet owners and animal lovers important tips and tricks on keeping, protecting, and caring for our four-legged friends. These informational brochures and campaigns are popular in Switzerland and are also appreciated abroad: The children's book on the proper handling of dogs and cats, "My Friend Labus," for example, has been translated into Hungarian, Arabic, Romanian, Georgian, Thai, Spanish, and many other languages and is frequently used in schools. SUST regularly offers public training courses for pet owners and animal lovers and conducts information and media campaigns on important topics: cat neutering, summer heat in vehicles, and proper gift-giving at Christmas are just a few examples.
These four elements and their foundation form the important basis for sustainable animal welfare projects.
Those animals that have not yet benefited from the effects of this reconstruction work and were born into a world where they are not wanted need the immediate help of SUST.
Emergency aid: This is how animal lives are saved.
SUST provides immediate assistance through animal rescue operations, first aid and veterinary services, and through its animal orphan hospitals: Here, injured, sick, and abandoned street animals find refuge and receive urgently needed veterinary care and attention. The Susy Utzinger Foundation for Animal Welfare finances veterinary costs, clinic equipment, medications, surgeries, therapies, food, and care in the animal orphan hospitals. SUST often also finances the construction of the corresponding clinic.
Social assistance for animals: For pets belonging to impoverished pet owners, SUST offers free food and regular veterinary consultations at greatly reduced rates at various locations in Switzerland.
The activities of the Susy Utzinger Foundation for Animal Welfare are financed exclusively through donations and bequests (no support from the public sector).
