Lobster Aid
Not a RED lobster, but a rare white one.. a special one of a kind English bull terrier called Lobster. Not only my best friend, but a loving friend & gentle ally to all that have been graced with meeting him. In fact, we don’t refer to him as a ‘dog’ - he’s a ‘person’
Our story or plight you are about to embark on tells of our current struggle to raise funds to ‘get Lobster home’; as we’re stuck in Belgium and need to get back to our friends, family and our life back in Australia..and to do that; we desperately need your help!
After selling and giving away everything I owned (business, car, motorcycle, belongings, etc) to purchase a ‘one way’ ticket to Belgium back in November 2007, Lobster and I departed Australia to take a huge gamble and give life another ‘go’ to start again, and see where it would take us. There was something missing in my life, and after meeting a young Belgian surfer in Byron Bay I thought that this may have been it.
With the promise that we’d be ‘looked after’, given we’d sacrificed everything we had including our lives as we knew it - I put my trust in the universe and here we are. Unfortunately, things didn’t ‘work out’ and without going into further detail; after 3 very rocky months had found ourselves ‘kicked out onto the street’ and inevitably made ‘homeless’. Luckily Belgium has it’s fair share of derolic, broken down buildings and we’ve been able to cart our belongings into a few of the old dumps to seek shelter from the rain, snow and freezing temperatures of a night time.
I have no work visa; nor speak the language and cannot legally obtain or seek employment - nor recieve any monetary assistace from the government (as we basically, don’t exist within the system!) - so, therefore have no possible way of raising the flight to get Lobster home!
A major problem is the extreme Australian quarantine legislations; Lobster must remain in Belgium for 60 - 150 days / or 5 months (after a rabies anti-body blood test is taken) before he can enter back into Australia otherwise he must spend the latter of those days in quarantine confinement. (Eg: 60 days here and 120 days in Aust.) To qualify for the minimum quarantine period of 30 days (cost @ $1,000 a month). Australia’s quarantine laws (PDF file)
I choose to ‘tough it out’ here - I would never put him through such a ludicrous ordeal!
Even worse, after emailing a pet logistics company for a ‘quotation’ regarding Lobster’s costs of a return flight home - I was extremely shocked to find it amounting to $7,800!!! (Given it cost me $3,200 to fly him here - why is it more than double?)
Talking about ‘faith in the universe’; Lobster and I had stumbled across a kindhearted person (whom we now call ‘a true friend’) who just so happened to have been constructing websites for the last 10 years! There’s no way I could have been able to put this together and it’s absolutely amazing - I guess sometimes you never know just what’s around the corner.. and if you can help; it just might be the answer and he’ll be home again!
PLEASE HELP!!! I just need to raise $10,000 for his trip & quarantine costs - if we’re lucky enough to raise anything over that quota in donations, Lobster and I will forward the rest to a charity supporting mistreated & homeless dogs.