Home needed
Pleiades
A cream-white dog with a long coat and soft folded ears, photographed on the grass on a blue lead. The post said simply: home needed for Pleiades.
Adopt
Tell me about your home.
The dogs are in Turkey. Bringing one to you takes time and it takes paperwork, and I would rather be honest with you about that at the start than halfway through. Fill this in and a person will read it and write back to you.
Two weeks
That is how long a dog has out there. Two weeks on that land, in that weather, with what we can carry to them. The ones you see on this page are not waiting comfortably. They are waiting against a clock.
The ones waiting
We pay for everything — they just need a home.
These are dogs the foundation has been trying to place. Their names come from the stars, because that is where the name Starseeds comes from.
Found a home
Sirius
Sirius made it. He was placed with a family in Russia, and the photograph above is him in the snow, in a coat, on a lead, with someone kneeling in the road to hold him. That is what the end of this looks like.
Homed · no longer waiting
Home needed
Orion
Black and tan, photographed among rubble and rubbish in the street. Her own words for him: thrown away like trash, but born to shine like the stars. He was found in a dumpster.
Home needed
A litter, no names yet
Newborns photographed asleep in a heap. They were not named when the picture was taken. Winter is what decides whether a litter like this one lives, which is why the appeal went out the day it was taken.
Twenty-one more dogs were being brought over at the time of writing, and the foundation has asked people to reach out about them directly. If none of the faces above is still waiting, there will be others.
What happens next
There is no automatic reply at the end of this.
A person reads it
Every application is read by someone, not sorted by a machine. You will get a real answer, written to you.
We look for the match
It depends as much on the dog as on the home. A dog who is frightened of children should not go to a house full of them, however good that house is. Sometimes the honest answer is that the dog we have is not the dog for you, and we will say so.
Then the slow part
A puppy cannot fly until it is six months old. Dogs often travel by road to Spain before they fly anywhere. Doccio took the better part of a year to reach Miami. Transport has a cost, and we work it out together rather than springing it on you.
Before you apply
A guide
How to adopt a street dog from Turkey
People ask the same three questions, in the same order. How does it work. How long does it take. What will it cost me. Here are the answers, without decoration.
For adopters
The first thirty days
A dog who has lived on open land does not arrive knowing what a home is. Nearly everything that goes wrong in the first month is a version of the same mistake: too much, too soon.
Adoption
Apply to adopt.
This is the whole form. It takes two minutes.
We pay for everything — the veterinary care, the medicine, the transport and the flight. You are not being asked for money. You are being asked whether there is room in your life for a dog who has never had one.
A person reads every application and writes back to you.
Not everyone can take a dog home. That is all right.
The dogs still on the street in Istanbul need treatment and food whether or not anyone adopts them. If adopting is not something you can do, helping to keep one alive is.