Street dogs.

One of my tasks on day one at the office was to help a local IMPACT club administer surveys to people in Lupeni about the street dog situation here.  I should explain: Lupeni, a town of about 24,000 people, is also home to hundreds, if not thousands, of street dogs.  They're everywhere, as prolific as squirrels in the small Midwestern towns we grew up in, and that's no exaggeration.  The story is interesting: when Ceausescu's communist government collectivized Romanian agriculture, thousands of peasant farmers were forced to move off their land into government-provided apartment blocs ("filing cabinets," as one of our friends calls them).  When these country folks moved into cities, they brought their farm dogs with them, keeping them outside the apartments and feeding them, etc.  That was decades ago, so we're now a few generations of pups removed from the original pets-turned-strays, and today's street dogs are far less domesticated.  Some of them are cute, and some of them still get fed by people who are fond of them, and plenty of them are harmless.  It's puppy season right now, and there are furry little balls of adorableness all over the place, stumbling cutely over themselves in an attempt to come get you to pet them.  I can't help but love them, and I'm not alone -- I've seen plenty of Romanians standing around puppies this week too, cooing and taking pictures.  But then the pups grow up.  And some of the grown street dogs here are terrifying, shaggy and fierce looking, with matted fur and pointy teeth and angry barks.  They congregate around dumpsters, jumping in and out and tearing through the trash for food, scattering the debris all over.  And they bite people: over 200 people last year in Lupeni alone, according to one statistic I heard.

(I should add the disclamer here that we don't walk around in fear of the street dogs.  If you're smart and pay attention, and occasionally pick up a rock to scare them off, you'll be fine.  But things do happen, and they are wild animals, and their presence near kindergartens and in public parks and lounging in the middle of the road causes problems.  Serious problems.)

So on Monday I went to the park for a couple hours, asking people sunning on the benches if I could have a few minutes to ask them some questions.  And oh, the stories I heard.  In an hour and a half, I talked to nine people.  Of those nine, seven had been attacked by a street dog -- some had only had their pants ripped or their bread snatched from their hand, but a few had experienced serious bites.  Every single person I talked to said that although they like dogs as pets, they think the street dog situation is a huge problem.  Every single person I talked to complained about the lack of cleanliness in the city, with trash all over -- which can largely be attributed to the dogs.  And every single person I talked to said that the city hasn't really done anything to address the problem.  (I should insert another comment here: Lupeni's mayor is notoriously corrupt, and public opinion is pretty blatantly apathetic towards him... and yet he continues to get re-elected, somehow.)

But here's something else that I thought was interesting.  One of the last questions on the survey was about who is responsible for taking care of the street dog problem.  And again, though my sample size was ridiculously small, 7 out of the 9 people I interviewed said the same thing: the mayor and his council.  When I'd press them, asking, "What about the community?  You?  Any others?" they would say no, no, what could they do?  It's the responsibility of the city government.  The same city government that they had just told me, five minutes before, doesn't do anything.

One of the reasons New Horizons Foundation exists is to tackle apathy and corruption, legacies left over by the years of communist rule.  Living in Târgu Mureş, a larger city that has its act together and runs really well (and, by the way, is largely free of street dogs), it was hard to remember that.  I just didn't see it.  But now that we're in the Jiu Valley, I'm starting to see it again -- the attitudes and fatalism and helplessness that communism taught.  Nobody wants the street dogs, but nobody is doing anything about it.  Well, nobody except for these IMPACT kids.  And that makes me so excited and proud of them -- and hopeful that maybe, maybe, their involvement will catch on.