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In the late summer of 2003, Pat was approached by Jane Holland who works for a radio station in the UK. She’d heard of the work that Pat and Dave were doing for the animals on Kefalonia, and she thought she could help by arranging a very large donation of Iams dog food. True to her word, she spoke to the Wood Green Animal Shelter, near Cambridge in England, and they were happy to make a donation.
This was, of course, brilliant, but we then realised we had a problem: The food was worth a considerable amount of money, but the shipping costs were likely to outstrip the value of the food!
This is where fate began to take a hand. At the beginning of the season, Antonia, who works for Sunvil Holidays and Greek Islands Club, had also become aware of the work at Villa Maura: as quite often happens here, she had on occasion, been approached by some of her guests who had found abandoned or injured animals and asked here to do something about it.
On making enquiries, she was pointed in the direction of the Dolmans and rapidly became involved in their activities (she says she hasn’t had a minute’s peace since, and is now the treasurer of Kefalonia Animal Trust). She had already persuaded Sunvil and GIC to include a page of text in their information booklets, explaining what happens with the strays and asking for cash donations or gifts of help, blankets, toys, towels or food.
As it happened, they didn’t actually need much persuasion, pointing out that they already support shelters and charity organisations in other parts of Greece.
Anyway, back to the plot. Dave and Pat spoke to Antonia about their problem, and she swung into action. She spoke to the Sunvil and GIC London office and asked if they could offer any advice. “We can do better than that” they replied. Their Operations Manager, Chris Wright, took over the job and persuaded their carrier, Excel Airways to ferry the food. But he didn’t stop there! He also spoke to Serviceair Cargo, their handling agent at Gatwick, and Olympic Airways who handle the cargo at Kefalonia, and persuaded them to chip in and do the job for nothing. He went on to co-ordinate the whole operation from loading at Gatwick to unloading at Kefalonia, and it only remained for us to get it to and from the airports.
In the UK, Pat’s son-in-law, Eric Behenna, collected the food from Wood Green Animal Shelter, and drove it to Gatwick. Serviceair then took over and loaded it on to the Excel flight to Kefalonia, where it was unloaded by Olympic Airways, and finally collected by a whole crowd of helpers who transported it to Villa Maura.
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