23/08/2026
We rarely post about ourselves, but some accusations and insinuations need addressing because, quite frankly, we strongly resent them.
The irony is that we don’t bring nationality into our posts. Others do that themselves by using their interpretation.
There has been an insinuation made that because we are foreigners, our animal-welfare posts pertaining to animals in Portugal comes from privilege and amounts to criticizing Portuguese people as a whole. That has really annoyed us.
Before saying anything publicly, we checked ourselves. We used AI to search our extensive notes and saved TFF posts for xenophobia, generalizations about Portuguese people, or any other nationality. We didn’t really need to—we know what we write, how we think, and what motivates us—but we wanted to be 100% certain nothing was said inadvertently. We found absolutely nothing.
What we did find was criticism of many animal-welfare issues including abandonment, chaining, irresponsible ownership, shelter conditions, bureaucracy, adoption barriers, lack of transparency, and situations where animals pay the price for human decisions.
That is what TFF talks about. Our total motivation is to help animals. That’s it. We couldn’t care less whether the human involved is Portuguese, British, German, Dutch, or anything else. The animal doesn’t know where somebody comes from, it doesn’t care, and neither do we.
What we particularly resent is having our nationality introduced by others to explain why we supposedly think the way we do. According to some, being foreign means we're privileged, have more money, don't understand Portuguese lives, and live in our own bubbles. We've also had our relevance questioned for not speaking fluent Portuguese, alongside the familiar argument about foreigners coming here and telling people what to do.
Those are nationality-based judgements being made about us. And they create a clear contradiction: if making assumptions about Portuguese people because they're Portuguese is wrong—and of course it is—then making assumptions about foreigners because they're foreign is wrong too. You cannot apply one standard in one direction and another in reverse.
When an animal-welfare discussion moves from what happened to the animal to the nationality, assumption about finances, language, or background of the people raising the issue, we call that going to the basement. The original subject gets replaced by something that had absolutely nothing to do with the post in the first place. It’s a weak deflection tactic and we are not accepting it.
Sadly, we also know that we are not alone in this. Other groups and pages with the exact same goals face the very same treatment, and it isn't okay. Even if it only happens once, once is too often.
Dismissing people, silencing advocacy, or dodging hard truths about animal welfare just by pointing at someone's passport is a tired, lazy tactic—and it's time it stopped.
People are perfectly entitled to disagree with us, but disagree with what we actually say. An interpretation isn't evidence, something someone reads into our words doesn't become something we said, and an assumption about our motives doesn't become fact just because someone believes it.
We’ve spent thousands of hours helping animals in Portugal since 2019, including when we aren’t physically there. We don't mention that to justify ourselves, but because it provides rather better evidence of what motivates TFF than someone else's assumptions about where we come from.
So yes, we resent these kind of stupid accusations. We resent the little insinuations. And we reject the casual prejudice that tries to use a foreign label to shut down a viable conversation.
If we lose followers, likes, or anything else because someone insists on misinterpreting our words to mean anything other than the welfare of animals, then so be it.
Our focus always was, is, and always will be, the animals and their lives.
Team Frankie ❤️❤️🐾🐾
