STRAY-vivor Family Day: 59 rescued street dogs and their families in Manila

On 15 August, 59 dogs who used to sleep on Philippine streets walked into a shopping mall in Manila with the families who had taken them in. PAWS and BabyDoge Philippines have a word for those households — PAWmilies — and for one afternoon the Activity Center at Ayala Malls Manila Bay was given over to them completely for STRAY-vivor Family Day.

600 people came through, and PHP 193,900 was raised for the PAWS shelter. Together with 60 kg of food BabyDoge donated directly, that comes to around 1,350 kg — more than 5,000 bowls.

PAWS puts the number of stray dogs in the Philippines at 12 million. The 59 in the mall that afternoon were the ones who got out.

Inside STRAY-vivor Family Day at Ayala Malls Manila Bay

The 59 had the run of the place, and the mall filled up around them. The PAWmilies came with aspins, the native Philippine street dogs, and other owners came with dogs of every kind — pedigrees and mixes and house pets who had never spent a night outdoors. They lined up for the booths alongside everybody else, supporting the cause. Every peso they spent is going to PAWS.

The stray-vivors were thoroughly spoiled. There was a buffet laid on for them. One of the sponsors supplied dog beds, and the first 50 families carried one home along with a premium gift pack. Portrait sessions with professional photographers were free, there was a photo wall, and a raffle offered a night away at Novotel Suites Manila for two people and one dog.

At the arcade booths, fifty pesos bought a game and every peso went to PAWS. Six stamps earned a collectible sticker, and the stickers carried real shelter dogs by name: Post, Banoi, Thormund. Animals still waiting for homes, heading out into Manila in children’s pockets.

Vets saw animals free of charge and a vaccination drive ran alongside, open to anyone who brought a pet.

Jodi Sta. Maria and Putol

Jodi Sta. Maria took the stage with her youngest rescue.

The actress is a PAWS ambassador. Putol is the fourth animal she has taken in, a probinsyano she first spotted on the CCTV at her house outside Manila, arriving with two or three others to drink from the pool and sleeping there at night. When she finally visited he followed her indoors and stayed four days, long enough for her to see the face wound she thought had come from a tricycle wheel, the blinded eye and the cut paws.

Driving back to Manila, she caught sight of him in the wing mirror running after the car, and called for it to stop. He went home with her that day. The vet could not save the left eye. She used the stage to ask people facing monsoon evacuations to take their animals with them rather than leave them behind. ABS-CBN reported her remarks on 21 August.

Liesl’s story: the blind rescue dog who wore a crown

One of the 59 adopted dogs could not see the room she was standing in.

Liesl was beaten before anybody adopted her, and the beating took her sight. In the afternoon her furdad, Eton Bonifacio Concepcion, brought her up onto the stage and held open a blanket printed with two photographs. On the left, the dog he first met: coat in patches, face wounded, an eye already lost. On the right, the dog he has now, riding in a car with her tongue out and a cartoon crown drawn above her head. Between the two pictures, three words. Love and compassion.

The pair of them had dressed for the occasion. Liesl in yellow Filipiniana with roses stitched down her back, a small gold crown fastened between her ears and a Grand Award sash across her shoulder. Eton in a matching barong. The crown somebody once drew on a photograph of her as a joke had turned into a real one.

Nothing else on the floor made the case as plainly.

12 million is the kind of figure people nod at and forget. It is harder to forget standing in a shopping mall, looking at what one of them survived.

Why rescued street dogs get returned, and how to prevent it

Lestre Zapanta came to teach.

He trades as the Pinoy Dog Whisperer, has close to 2 million followers, and is about as near as Philippine dog training gets to a household name. He spent his session showing families how to read a frightened dog.

This is the part that saves lives after the paperwork is signed. Street dogs get given back. They flinch at raised hands, they guard their food, they panic at the sound of a door, and a family who cannot read any of that starts to think they made a mistake. Nobody adopts a dog intending to return it. It happens because nobody taught them what they were looking at.

Alongside him, the Animal Connection Lounge, run by animal communicator and PAWS volunteer Mae Ilagan, gave new owners somewhere to bring the worries they had not yet said out loud.

BabyDoge in Cebu: supplying MARO and Happy Tails

BabyDoge’s Philippine story began on 14 March, five months before Manila.

A team drove to Cebu with community organisers and local creators and unloaded supplies at two shelters, MARO and Happy Tails Philippines. Food, medication, toys. Everything on the list, and the shelters had written the list themselves.

Between them those two places look after around 500 animals. Neither has institutional funding. The people who run them hold other jobs and come in afterwards.

500 animals eat every day regardless of that.

Plenty of the dogs there came off the street carrying histories you can still read on their bodies. Every one of them came straight up to a room full of strangers with their tail wagging.

Alongside Happy Tails, Biyaya Animal Care is also a partner. The arrangement is simple and it is the one BabyDoge uses everywhere: work directly with the shelters, let them send through the animals and the stories that need help, and build the campaign around what is actually in front of them.

18 Filipino creators, 13 million followers

Manila was BabyDoge’s first event in the capital, and the floor was worked by 18 creators drawn from across the city, carrying a combined following of more than 13 million.

That number is the point of them being there. A shelter cannot reach 13 million Filipinos on its own. These are the people who take a photograph of Liesl in her crown and put it in front of an audience that has never walked past a PAWS shelter in its life, and BabyDoge has put real effort into keeping those relationships going rather than renting them for a day.

BabyDoge’s animal welfare record since 2021

BabyDoge, a community-driven cryptocurrency built around animal welfare, launched in 2021. The dog turned out to be the serious part.

In May 2023 it set the Guinness World Records title for the largest donation of pet food in 24 hours: 36,750.88 kg (81,021 lb of pet food), gathered in Bentonville, Arkansas, USA with Best Friends Animal Society and handed out to more than 30 charities. The title has since been surpassed by another organisation.

Before that came the rescue-funding partnership with North Shore Animal League America and a $20,000 cheque to Furkids in Georgia for a transport van. In 2022 the ASPCA made BabyDoge its first brand partner to fund animal flights, and the March flight it paid for carried the programme’s 200,000th relocated animal, a dog called Noah, adopted the day he landed.

Publicly reported giving to dog support organisations since 2021 stands at $1.5M+ — every figure is published with its source.

Partners: PAWS, Ayala Malls Manila Bay, BabyDoge Philippines

PAWS sent three of its directors: Atty. Anna Cabrera, Rich Ilustre and Cristina Martinez. Atty. Nikki Abad came for BabyDoge Philippines.

Ayala Malls Manila Bay gave the space. PAWS gave the vets, the volunteers and 72 years of knowing exactly what it is doing. Three days later, Daily Tribune ran a photograph from the day under the headline “Stray-vivor no longer”.

What’s next for BabyDoge animal welfare in the Philippines

More of this, and bigger. BabyDoge is building joint activations with shelters the way it has done in Brazil, and something larger is already in planning.

59 dogs spent that Saturday indoors, eating from a buffet, sitting for portraits, being fussed over by strangers. One of them could not see any of it, and went home wearing a crown.

Somebody has to go and find the next 59.

How to help: adopt, donate or volunteer with PAWS

It all comes back to three things anyone can do.

Adopt an aspin or puspin. PAWS rehomes shelter animals through its own adoption process, and it gives priority to people with a record of adopting aspins rather than choosing a dog on breed. Applications and requirements are on the PAWS site.

Donate. Cash goes furthest, but the shelter also runs on dog and cat food, and on medical funding for animals that arrive injured.

Volunteer. PAWS is largely volunteer-run and takes people at the shelter as well as at events like this one.

All three start in the same place: paws.org.ph.