About us
We are available 24/7 for animals in (medical) distress
History
Before we officially became a foundation, Henry Keizer had started animal services from the Central Doctors Service. The Central Doctors Service was, we are talking about the early 1970s, a very modern service for people who needed a doctor outside office hours, or who needed to be transported. Animals were added a bit and they too were transported in humane ambulances.
When the Central Doctors Service professionalised further and wanted to divest the animal transport side branch, Henk Peters, the man we consider our official founder, took over the rights to this service for one guilder. Money was then borrowed from the bank and two humane ambulances were bought over and completely converted for animals.
On 8 May 1978, Henk Peters registers the Central Animal Ambulance Foundation with the Chamber of Commerce. We were born!
It started with a small group in a house on Frederik Hendrikstraat, but that soon became too small and they moved into a larger building on the Hoogte Kadijk. After 19 years, Dierenambulance Amsterdam also outgrew its premises there and has therefore been based in the building specially designed for us at Voorlandpad 2, Oost/Watergraafsmeer, since 2001.
A lot has changed in more than 40 years. Our training has improved immensely, our equipment has evolved and our ambulances have gone from glorified vans to full-fledged medical units. Our views on animal welfare have also changed enormously, even in this relatively short period of 40+ years. Whereas in 1984, the official opening of the animal ambulance's new premises on the Hoogte Kadijk was performed by a circus elephant, that would be unthinkable today.
Some time ago, we had a discussion about whether or not to rescue mice. Yes, we help those too! And that is one of the great things about our work, that that vision is still evolving. We have regular discussions with each other about where the boundaries of our assistance lie and what values are important to us.
In the first years of the Amsterdam Animal Ambulance, at the Hoogte Kadijk, things were very different in the control room than they are now. There were two telephones stuck in a kind of board. There was no computer yet, the rides were put in the report book. Everything was done manually and it was a lot of work if you had to look something back. We also had a whole book of missing cats, which was centimetres thick.
Meanwhile, we work with ICT system DAS.
DAS stands for Dierenambulance Administratie Systeem, it is a system written specifically for our work and used by over 20 other animal rescue centres in the Netherlands. DAS can also be linked to a number of other systems such as the system with which many animal shelters in the Netherlands work. In this way, information about an animal can be exchanged quickly.
Animal responders on the ambulances who used to work on paper now have to enter their information directly on a tablet. The control room enters more data in the new system but needs to communicate with the ambulance less often because the data is directly visible on the tablet.
In the coming years, we will continue to develop this system, together with the developer and other animal ambulances.
Want to know more about the past, the present and future plans?
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Objectives
Hallmarks
- Animal Ambulance Amsterdam has been granted by the Tax Office designated as a Public Benefit Organisation (ANBI) and registered under number 005284612. This means that we do not have to pay gift and/or inheritance tax on donations and inheritances received. Everything therefore actually benefits our work for sick and/or injured animals.
- We also have a CBF Recognition. The Acknowledgement is the seal of approval for charities issued by regulator CBF. With the Accreditation, organisations show that they meet strict quality requirements. You can give to an Accredited Charity with peace of mind because you can assume that the organisation actually contributes to a better world, handles every euro with care, is accountable and is independently audited.
We believe in Gandhi's saying: the civilisation of a society can be gauged by how animals are treated.
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... To the animals of Amsterdam