After moving to Bulgaria in 2005, Michelle Jones, co-founder of K9 Rescue, was saddened to see so many animals suffering as a result of cruelty and neglect. She soon fell in love with the large number of stray dogs many in desperate need of food and medical treatment, struggling to survive on the streets and decided to do what she could to help create a brighter future for them.

During the following six years, Michelle quickly became heavily involved in rescuing sick and injured street dogs and puppies, providing much needed veterinary care and then re-homing them both locally in Bulgaria, elsewhere in Europe and beyond. She witnessed so many critical injury cases from both abuse and accidents on the streets as well as the typical starvation and skin disease cases that are endemic in the street dog populations due to lack of food and stress of being homeless.

Upon her return to the UK, together with her husband Brian, Michelle formed our K9 Rescue organisation and registered with the Charity Commission. Together, Michelle and Brian have now taken the initiative to focus on the most difficult, neediest cases; the old, critically sick, traumatised, neglected and abused, or dogs that are simply not as attractive to adopters or problematic in some way, referred on to us by other rescuers or shelters; helping dogs that would otherwise by euthanised, deemed as having no future. As a result, unlike many other rescues, we do not re-home hundreds of dogs as these dogs often take months to rehabilitate at our sanctuary in the UK, making it very difficult to have a steady flow of income, and as a result we are rarely able to cover costs.

“a world where animal suffering ends and living in harmony begins”

K9 Rescue is making a global impact for abandoned animals in need, with a primary focus on Eastern Europe. In regions where street dogs and cats are often stigmatized as pests and subjected to cruel treatment through methods such as poisoning, beatings and torture, we strive to make a profound difference.

In addition to running our Rehabilitation Sanctuary in the UK for traumatised street dogs, we supply food, medical supplies and veterinary aid to grass roots rescues in the poorest and hardest hit countries of Eastern Europe; currently the emergency animal aid that is desperately needed in Ukraine. Your invaluable support means you will be directly helping animals both displaced by the war in Ukraine, as well as the rescues in neighbouring countries who are taking in the displaced animals.

Join us in our global mission to bring compassion, care and hope to these innocent lives to create a brighter future for them.  Our projects include:

• UK Rehab Sanctuary: Healing hearts of rescued dogs
• Macedonia: Nourishing street cats & dogs
• Ukraine War Aid: Saving animals in crisis with our War Animal Aid & Evacuation Relief Project

Join us in this vital mission and help us bring hope and relief to the most vulnerable – thank you!

We run a Rehabilitation Sanctuary in the UK where traumatised former street dogs can decompress in a natural environment and release all the acquired, and often inherited, fears and anxieties from all of the horrors that they, and their mothers, endured whilst trying to survive in a hostile environment. Depending on how deep rooted their trauma is, it can take months, sometimes years, for them to accept even the slightest touch, and even something simple like gently throwing a treat in their general direction, can seem like a missile being launched at them. Being able to rehabilitate PTSD dogs in a peaceful, calm environment, where they can learn to trust again on their own terms, and in their own time, is an invaluable and integral part of the process of true street dog rehabilitation, as many suffer greatly if rushed into a domestic environment with all the demands that living in a home with a family places upon them. Only when they are truly ready to take that step, do we offer our traumatised dogs for rehoming.

In 2013 we began supporting Mimi Mishevska of Mimi’s Forgotten Dogs Sanctuary in Northern Macedonia.  Mimi is one of many grass-roots shelters that work with the local community to protect the abandoned dogs and cats on the streets in and around Skopje, which is home to around half a million stray animals. Their work ensures that the stray animal populations are properly cared for with food, medical care and spay/neuter to keep the population size under control, as well as reducing the potential spread of diseases and parasites in both urban and natural environments, improving both animal welfare and a sustainable healthy ecosystem.

The animal rescue community in the Skopje region is made up of young people, caring for these animals as a community project. It is a difficult and emotionally exhausting task for these young people, who give up their spare time, often working several jobs to help buy feed, just to try to make a difference to the lives of these innocent, forgotten animals.

Mimi’s sanctuary, in a remote mountain village above Skopje, does amazing work literally on a shoestring. She is an active participant in the local animal rescue community, often squeezing in dogs and cats found by the community, who need extra one-to-one care, despite being full to overflowing, Mimi’s heart just can’t turn them away.

We see in Mimi, a heart that is so pure and full of love, we simply must help her, so whenever our own funds allow, we support her sanctuary with help for her huge vet bills, feed bills, kennel bills and more. Having no land of her own, Mimi is constantly being evicted from the land she rents, and each enforced relocation erodes her limited resources further, so now in 2024, we are in discussion with her about finding a plot of land to buy on her behalf, and build a permanent shelter, so that she can focus properly on her true calling of rescuing and helping the local community invest in the protection of the stray animal population and in turn, environmental sustainability for the local community in the long term.

Our desire to buy land for Mimi’s Forgotten Dogs Sanctuary may seem like a pipe dream, yet we are ever hopeful that a kind benefactor may one day sponsor the financing and building of a new environmentally sustainable Biodiverse Eco-Shelter, with its own bio-secure spay/neuter clinic, bearing the name of the sponsor as primary benefactor and patron of the new sanctuary. If any Donors or Corporate Sponsors would like to discuss the sponsorship of Mimi’s new Eco-Shelter and becoming a part of the mission to radically reshape the way rescue animals are sheltered and rehomed, please contact Michelle Jones on +44 203 866 1229

As the humanitarian crisis in the conflict zones of Ukraine deepens, the animal crisis in the region continues to unfold. Family dogs and cats, left behind as their owners fled or rendered homeless due to bombings, now wander the streets, searching for their lost families, confused and bewildered, not equipped with the survival instincts of their feral counterparts, commonplace in many Eastern European countries. K9 Rescue International are dedicated to providing aid to animals affected by the conflict, as well as evacuation of animals caught in the midst of the war zones in Ukraine.

Since the onset of the war in Ukraine, our team has been on the ground, tirelessly working to aid the millions of animals suddenly displaced by the turmoil, offering urgent assistance by providing vital resources, essential feed, emergency veterinary care, and facilitating their evacuation to safer regions, as well as providing food and resources to local residents, who have stayed behind to care for the animals. In 2023 we registered a Foundation in Ukraine to both continue this work and focus on sterilization projects, with a planned project in Poltava region which aims to sterilize 125 animals per month, preventing many lives from being born into a life of misery, starvation, and suffering. We firmly believe that this approach is essential to alleviate the suffering of street animal populations and can save many more lives in comparison to traditional physical rescue methods.

Through our partnerships and collaborations with local communities, we focus our support on initiatives that promote environmental sustainability – this includes projects such as reducing stray populations in urban and rural areas, through trap-neuter-return of the feral population and sterilization of domestic animals to both control the stray animal population and reduce the number of unwanted litters being born to unsterilised chain-dogs, which are then subsequently put to the streets, widely believed to be the true source of today’s strays, creating an unhealthy environment.

Our long-term project to build a Biodiverse Eco-Shelter in Ukraine which is planned to be an environmentally sustainable, EU compliant, state-of-the-art, animal shelter, called a Freedom Shelter, is set to revolutionize, and radically reshape the way rescue animals are sheltered and rehomed.

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Today, based on everything we have learnt after starting as a grass-roots shelter ourselves in Bulgaria, K9 Rescue’s mission has become International, with the aim to empower more independent animal rescuers and grass-roots shelters and foundations in Eastern Europe, to become self-sufficient in animal rescue, with a focus on eliminating the future need of foreign NGO’s by creating the framework for improved animal welfare and bio-security by working within their own local communities to create initiatives that promote sustainable development.

Environmentally sustainable initiatives such as reducing stray populations in urban and rural areas is key to achieving both humane animal welfare and the creation of a healthier living environment for all.  The creation of community groups to promote the proper care of the local stray animal populations with food and medical care to help reduce the potential spread of diseases and parasites in both urban and natural environments as well as the rescue and rehoming of stray animals within their community, together with spay/neuter programs have been shown to improve both animal welfare and create a sustainable healthy ecosystem.

Spay/neuter of both the feral population and sterilization of domestic animals is essential to both control the stray animal population and reduce the number of unwanted litters being born to unsterilized chain-dogs, which are then subsequently put to the streets, widely believed to be the true source of today’s strays, creating an unhealthy environment. Education within these community groups is critical to the success of these initiatives, as many believe that it is cruel to sterilize an animal and take away its’ right to give birth, yet think it is normal to then kill those same offspring, often using inhumane methods.

Together with our supporters, we’re developing sustainable solutions for humane animal welfare and healthier ecosystems. Through community initiatives, spay/neuter programs, and education, we’re creating a brighter future for animals and communities alike.