by Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

Every day there are inhumane horrors inflicted on defenceless animals, but now thanks to the proactive intervention of Animal Aid USA people are becoming more aware of how they can help change the world for shelter animals.

Animal Aid is a non-profit organisation, composed of volunteers, founded in 2012 to help animals. Each month the rescue group drives across America to relocate animals in kill-shelters and find them a loving home, focusing on banning the barbaric ways animals are euthanised, such as gas chambers and intra-cardiac injection without anaesthesia. Besides finding homes for animals who face an uncertain future, money is raised to fund spay and neuter programs in low income communities and raise awareness to the legal cruelty inflicted to these creatures.

The miracle workers who have created Animal Aid USA are Karen Talbot, Lorenzo Borghese and Georgina Bloomberg.

Karen, has worked for ten years as the Director of Occupational Health. As a mother she combined along the way her undying passion for children and animals: her adventure as leader of a rescue group started in 2008 with the initiative ‘Paws for a Cause,’ through a small awareness programme run by students at St. Joseph Elementary School in Hammton and their parents, ‘Making of Miracle Stories,’ aka M.O.M.S. In 2009 this group organised the Georgia Puppy Caravan, saving 150 puppies and dogs from an animal shelter in Summerville, while another 138 dogs were quarantined and given medical care. The caravan delivered 22 tons of donated pet food and in the course of five months, all those dogs left Georgia for new homes.

Karen’s devotion to dog rescue became a problem in her marriage with Dante LaSasso, who told her “it’s me or the dogs,” she obviously chose the dogs. But after divorce, Dante was so captivated by Karen’s cause, that he remarried the pooch miracle maker and instead of a wedding ring, Dante purchased Karen a transportation vehicle for her rescue missions. Their son, Matthew, is just thirteen and is already a very smart and conscientious advocate of Animal Aid USA, and every time he has time off school he joins the rescue team’s adventures.

Talbot reached out to Lorenzo Borghese in 2011, to ask him to help her with her cause, and he was so intrigued by how hard Karen worked to save animals from kill shelters that he gave up his Thanksgiving plans to join her in one of her caravans, after seeing the documentary she had co-produced ‘Take Me Home: The Story of the Georgia Puppy Caravan,’ that portrayed the atrocities done to animals and how she and her group tried to overcome them.

Lorenzo, is the founder and president of Royal Treatment, a pet line created for his beloved Black Lab, Belle as well as founder and president of Royal Pet Club; he donates $2 to Animal Aid USA every time a new customer buys from the Royal Pet Club and five percent of the company’s annual profits. He has been a longtime animal advocate and has worked with innumerable animal welfare organisations. Lorenzo is also an Ambassador to the American Humane Association and has worked with North Shore Animal League, the ASPCA and Animal Care & Control of NYC (AC&C), a kill shelter.

Georgina, as Lorenzo’s friend and as a strong advocate of pet adoption, immediately got involved in Animal Aid USA. She is also an Equine Welfare Ambassador for the ASPCA, Chair-woman of the Horse Council of the Humane Society of the United States, and a member of the Friends of Finn committee for the Humane Society of the United States, a group dedicated to fighting puppy mills.

In February 2013, Animal Aid USA celebrated its first anniversary of activity. And it’s utterly bewildering to retrace all the innumerable events and missions this non-profit has managed to carry out in the course of only 365 days!

The most recent Animal Aid USA fund raising event took place at the St. William Beaver House Penthouse on June 26th and was hosted by the founders of the organisation and by Kathryn de L.G -Halpern, Anna Rothschild and Rimma Rose.

If you want to make a difference in the life of our four-legged friends you can make donations through Animal Aid USA’s website or even join one of their extraordinary caravans, the schedule is already planned throughout all of 2014!