ID :
10967
Fri, 06/27/2008 - 20:35
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://oananews.org//node/10967
The shortlink copeid
Moscow authorities keep trying to address problem of stray dogs
MOSCOW, June 26 (By Itar-Tass World Service writer Lyudmila
Alexandrova) -- The attitude to homeless pets is a tell-tell sign showing how civilized society is, and in this sense it is no less important than the status the disabled or the down-and-outs.
From this standpoint the Moscow authorities can be criticized on and on, but in fairness one must admit that they really do something with the aim to improve the situation. Of late, the city government disbursed nearly one billion rubles that would be used mostly for building animal shelters.
By November 1, 2008 fifteen such facilities taking a total area of 20 hectares are to be built to house 24,000 homeless dogs.
Just recently, I saw pet enthusiasts in my neighborhood collecting
money for taking care of a local mongrel's six newly-born cubs. The pets were really nice-looking and cute. Their down-trodden, exhausted, but caring and affectionate mother (surely with a no easy past) hid the offspring deep inside the basement of a five-storey slum about to be pulled down. The activists' idea was to raise enough cash to take the pets to some humane society or animal shelter, but they succeeded in luring out only three of the six. All were taken to some shelter in the end, I reckon.
A woman neighbor, well-known for her love of pets, keeps telling
anyone who would listen the cubs that remained in the dark and damp
basement were far luckier.
"I hear people tell real horror stories about such shelters. The pets that keep roaming the streets are far luckier," the woman argued.
Packs of homeless dogs can always count on support and sympathy of
local kind-hearted folks. There is always someone eager to bring them
water and food. Some even build kennels where the dogs can hide from the wind and cold. All dogs are given and called by names. The pets pay their patrons back with boundless love, but quite eagerly and angrily bark at everybody else.
In Moscow, according to the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and
Evolution Problems, there are some 26,000 homeless dogs. Other sources say homeless pets in the city number 60,000, or even 100,000.
The dog population in Moscow keeps growing by an annual 2,000 to
5,000. As for the animal shelters already available, they can house no
more than 3,500.
Packs of stray dogs are not as harmless as it might seem. On April 11 Moscow's resident Vladimir Gaidarzhinsky, 55, died in Moscow's hospital N 36 a week after a pack of stray dogs attacked and mutilated him in the Izmailovo Park. The man suffered multiple wounds of the head, face, limbs and body.
On the average 7-8 people in Moscow suffer dog bites every day.
According to the most conservative estimates, 7,000 have been attacked by homeless dogs this year. Many of the victims were children. These are the official statistics, though. The real rate is certainly higher.
The authorities plan to create several animal shelters in each of the city's administrative districts.
"There will be seventeen of them. Some will be very large - for 5,000 animals each," says the Moscow mayor's first deputy in the city
government, Pyotr Biryukov.
The largest shelter will emerge in Moscow's northeast. Five thousand animals will be kept on an area of 5.3 hectares. The shelters are to be made multi-functional - with exhibition halls, where Moscow people will be encouraged to come to select a pet for adoption.
Currently, Moscow has eleven such shelters housing about 800 dogs.
Private organizations have approached the Moscow authorities with
proposals for creating shelters for homeless pets in other regions of
Russia, too, Biryukov said. "Animals will be taken there after six months' stay at shelters in Moscow."
Under the existing rules the homeless pet's stay at a shelter is paid for by the municipal authorities. After that the dog's future is in the hands of the shelter's managing company, which has to decide on its own what is to be done next. The dog cannot be released - after all, the shelters are built precisely with the aim to ensure there be fewer dogs on the city streets. And killing dogs is against the law.
Some see sterilization as the main way of controlling the population of homeless animals in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia.
The Wild Animals Catcher Service says last year alone over 10,000
homeless dogs were sterilized and supplied with electronic chips.
However, pet protection activists suspect that other organizations
subordinate to the Moscow government have been accepting dog corpses for utilization on a commercial scale.
Some campaigners for the dogs' rights claim that quite often they see sterilized dogs on the streets virtually "with their guts out." The animals were apparently let out immediately after surgery, although under the existing rules the animal that has been operated on is to stay at the shelter for another ten days.
The activists suggest a population control method that looks to them more humane than sterilization - taking homeless dogs to animal shelters and, if no owners agree to adopt them, making a lethal injection.
"We have bought out twelve hectares of land in the Kaluga Region for a future rural community," the president of the non-commercial charity organization Eco, Vera Petrosian, told the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda.
"The idea is simple. People will be invited to settle there on the
condition they will adopt several dogs. In the Czech Republic there are many orphanages of this type for adopted children. We are to create a similar establishment for pets. It will be a community of veterinarians and dog trainers."
Many pet protection activists are against, though.
The chief of the Moscow-based shelter BF-Bim, Natalya Bendik, is
quoted by the daily as saying that dogs are already being taken out of the city to a site in the Moscow region, near the garbage incinerator plant in the Lubertsy suburb. Natalya argues that a large area there has been surrounded with a barbed wire perimeter fence and called a shelter.
"There is not even a source of water for the dogs. It is quite clear nobody is going to take care of the animals there."
If the dogs begin to be taken to the Kaluga Region, nobody will be able to keep an eye on whether they are taken care of properly. We have even had to hire private detectives to eliminate dog slaughters at Moscow's animal shelters.
Animals rights campaigners want Moscow to have a special organization responsible for the homeless animals. The city's dog catcher service has now been closed down and all funds earmarked for the purpose have been transferred to the prefectures. These are ready to hire whoever comes their way just for the sake of addressing the stray dogs problem at the lowest cost possible.
It is for the past eight years now that rights activists and
ecologists have been pressing the city legislature for the adoption of a special law that would set the rules of keeping animals in the city. The legislators keep amending and rejecting the bill and then amending it again.
An opinion poll by the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily website has found that 47 percent of the polled are for the sterilization of homeless animals, 28 percent suggest sending them to the slaughter and 16 percent claim that dogs are no hindrance to them. And nine percent back the idea of taking stray dogs to locations at least 100 kilometers away from the city.
Alexandrova) -- The attitude to homeless pets is a tell-tell sign showing how civilized society is, and in this sense it is no less important than the status the disabled or the down-and-outs.
From this standpoint the Moscow authorities can be criticized on and on, but in fairness one must admit that they really do something with the aim to improve the situation. Of late, the city government disbursed nearly one billion rubles that would be used mostly for building animal shelters.
By November 1, 2008 fifteen such facilities taking a total area of 20 hectares are to be built to house 24,000 homeless dogs.
Just recently, I saw pet enthusiasts in my neighborhood collecting
money for taking care of a local mongrel's six newly-born cubs. The pets were really nice-looking and cute. Their down-trodden, exhausted, but caring and affectionate mother (surely with a no easy past) hid the offspring deep inside the basement of a five-storey slum about to be pulled down. The activists' idea was to raise enough cash to take the pets to some humane society or animal shelter, but they succeeded in luring out only three of the six. All were taken to some shelter in the end, I reckon.
A woman neighbor, well-known for her love of pets, keeps telling
anyone who would listen the cubs that remained in the dark and damp
basement were far luckier.
"I hear people tell real horror stories about such shelters. The pets that keep roaming the streets are far luckier," the woman argued.
Packs of homeless dogs can always count on support and sympathy of
local kind-hearted folks. There is always someone eager to bring them
water and food. Some even build kennels where the dogs can hide from the wind and cold. All dogs are given and called by names. The pets pay their patrons back with boundless love, but quite eagerly and angrily bark at everybody else.
In Moscow, according to the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and
Evolution Problems, there are some 26,000 homeless dogs. Other sources say homeless pets in the city number 60,000, or even 100,000.
The dog population in Moscow keeps growing by an annual 2,000 to
5,000. As for the animal shelters already available, they can house no
more than 3,500.
Packs of stray dogs are not as harmless as it might seem. On April 11 Moscow's resident Vladimir Gaidarzhinsky, 55, died in Moscow's hospital N 36 a week after a pack of stray dogs attacked and mutilated him in the Izmailovo Park. The man suffered multiple wounds of the head, face, limbs and body.
On the average 7-8 people in Moscow suffer dog bites every day.
According to the most conservative estimates, 7,000 have been attacked by homeless dogs this year. Many of the victims were children. These are the official statistics, though. The real rate is certainly higher.
The authorities plan to create several animal shelters in each of the city's administrative districts.
"There will be seventeen of them. Some will be very large - for 5,000 animals each," says the Moscow mayor's first deputy in the city
government, Pyotr Biryukov.
The largest shelter will emerge in Moscow's northeast. Five thousand animals will be kept on an area of 5.3 hectares. The shelters are to be made multi-functional - with exhibition halls, where Moscow people will be encouraged to come to select a pet for adoption.
Currently, Moscow has eleven such shelters housing about 800 dogs.
Private organizations have approached the Moscow authorities with
proposals for creating shelters for homeless pets in other regions of
Russia, too, Biryukov said. "Animals will be taken there after six months' stay at shelters in Moscow."
Under the existing rules the homeless pet's stay at a shelter is paid for by the municipal authorities. After that the dog's future is in the hands of the shelter's managing company, which has to decide on its own what is to be done next. The dog cannot be released - after all, the shelters are built precisely with the aim to ensure there be fewer dogs on the city streets. And killing dogs is against the law.
Some see sterilization as the main way of controlling the population of homeless animals in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia.
The Wild Animals Catcher Service says last year alone over 10,000
homeless dogs were sterilized and supplied with electronic chips.
However, pet protection activists suspect that other organizations
subordinate to the Moscow government have been accepting dog corpses for utilization on a commercial scale.
Some campaigners for the dogs' rights claim that quite often they see sterilized dogs on the streets virtually "with their guts out." The animals were apparently let out immediately after surgery, although under the existing rules the animal that has been operated on is to stay at the shelter for another ten days.
The activists suggest a population control method that looks to them more humane than sterilization - taking homeless dogs to animal shelters and, if no owners agree to adopt them, making a lethal injection.
"We have bought out twelve hectares of land in the Kaluga Region for a future rural community," the president of the non-commercial charity organization Eco, Vera Petrosian, told the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda.
"The idea is simple. People will be invited to settle there on the
condition they will adopt several dogs. In the Czech Republic there are many orphanages of this type for adopted children. We are to create a similar establishment for pets. It will be a community of veterinarians and dog trainers."
Many pet protection activists are against, though.
The chief of the Moscow-based shelter BF-Bim, Natalya Bendik, is
quoted by the daily as saying that dogs are already being taken out of the city to a site in the Moscow region, near the garbage incinerator plant in the Lubertsy suburb. Natalya argues that a large area there has been surrounded with a barbed wire perimeter fence and called a shelter.
"There is not even a source of water for the dogs. It is quite clear nobody is going to take care of the animals there."
If the dogs begin to be taken to the Kaluga Region, nobody will be able to keep an eye on whether they are taken care of properly. We have even had to hire private detectives to eliminate dog slaughters at Moscow's animal shelters.
Animals rights campaigners want Moscow to have a special organization responsible for the homeless animals. The city's dog catcher service has now been closed down and all funds earmarked for the purpose have been transferred to the prefectures. These are ready to hire whoever comes their way just for the sake of addressing the stray dogs problem at the lowest cost possible.
It is for the past eight years now that rights activists and
ecologists have been pressing the city legislature for the adoption of a special law that would set the rules of keeping animals in the city. The legislators keep amending and rejecting the bill and then amending it again.
An opinion poll by the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily website has found that 47 percent of the polled are for the sterilization of homeless animals, 28 percent suggest sending them to the slaughter and 16 percent claim that dogs are no hindrance to them. And nine percent back the idea of taking stray dogs to locations at least 100 kilometers away from the city.
