Street dogs and euthanasia.

As previous posts have mentioned, Lupeni's street dogs are a less-than-savory part of life here.  There are hundreds of them, statistics show that there are somewhere around 200 attacks per year, and plenty of people are scared of them, recoiling and jumping back when one comes close.  It's not nice.  So in response, some IMPACT kids and New Horizons Foundation staff were working on getting a city-wide sterilization program going.  They've spent the last few months on the project, working hard on getting cooperation from Lupeni's notoriously-corrupt city officials and gathering public support through round table discussions, press appearances, and community meetings.  They finally found a public building which they could use as a temporary shelter to house the dogs after the procedure was completed, got commitments from vets from all over the county to come and help, and in mid-September, they started rounding up dogs.

 Graţiela, our fearless NHF co-worker, with local authorities in the soon-to-be shelter.

 

IMPACT kids worked hard to clean up the building 

and make it an appropriate shelter for housing dogs post-surgery.

IMPACT kids after cleaning up the shelter.

 But things didn't go according to plan.  Ideally, the county was going to send dogcatchers to Lupeni with special equipment, and they would go neighborhood by neighborhood to round up all the dogs.  The leaders of the project had already talked to animal-lovers in each neighborhood, asking for their support and assistance in luring the dogs with food, etc., so that the dogcatchers could take them away.  But it all went much slower than expected, with only about 40 dogs captured in the entire first week.  The city hall also restricted access to the shelter, meaning that none of the IMPACT kids, NHF staff, or animal lovers who had purchased food for the recovering animals were allowed in to see them.  And then the dogs started disappearing.

It's still not clear what happened to those first dogs, but a few days later we learned that the city hall was changing its policy.  In Bucharest, Romania's capital, legislation had been pending for years to allow local authorities to kill street dogs -- an approach that was illegal, except in cases of attack.  However, recently a four-year-old boy was tragically killed by street dogs in a public park in Bucharest, and that terrible incident was enough to turn the tide.  The legislation was passed -- and suddenly Lupeni's city administration decided they were going to enact it.  Their policy changed from sterilizing to euthanizing, and we were no longer sure what to do.

So after discussion at the NHF office, we withdrew our support from the project.  We wanted to do a sterilization campaign because statistics show that sterilized dogs are less aggressive, less likely to attack people, and also because mass sterilization would slowly diminish the population of street dogs in Lupeni (if done properly).  Plus, we recognized that many people love the street dogs -- they feed them, play with the puppies, and have a lot of fondness and affection for them.  Euthanizing them all was not a solution we could support.  But unfortunately, that's what the city hall decided to do.  So we sent out a press release and withdrew from the project.

I was gone last week in Cluj at meetings, but when I returned home on Monday evening something already seemed different to me.  And it's true: the streets are emptier.  The city hall is slowly capturing and killing the street dogs of Lupeni.  But there are dogs left, and I'm sure there are dogs who will escape the round-up.  Currently the city hall is paying people 20 lei (about 6 dollars) per dog, so citizens of Lupeni who are in need of cash are helping with the efforts.  But the biggest, scariest dogs aren't being taken -- the risk isn't worth a mere 20 lei -- meaning that the project to make Lupeni safer is actually leaving the least safe dogs free.  And we've noticed that the dogs are changing territory.  I don't know if they're scared or trying to run away or what, but there are new dogs in new places, which is weird -- usually they stick close to their territory, and there's a type of security in that.  I'm not sure what the new big white-and-black dog behind the office is like, and that makes me more nervous.  At least before I knew what to expect.

Yet in some ways, it's a victory -- people will be safe from attacks, children can play outside without fear of being bitten, we can go running without paranoia.  Plus, the advocacy efforts of the IMPACT kids really did make people pay attention, and now something is being done about the problem.  But in other ways, it makes me sad -- and I don't even like the street dogs!  But I did like seeing the roly-poly puppies on the train tracks, and I didn't mind the friendly ones who curled up to nap in the sunshine in alleys and by dumpsters.  It makes me sad that hundreds of animals are going to die simply because a problem has been left unaddressed for so long that there seems to be no other efficient, cost-effective way to deal with it.  It makes me nervous that this disregard for life and well-being carries over into other areas of the governance of Lupeni.  It makes me angry that the city hall waited until now to do anything at all about the street dog problem -- and now, they take the "easy" way, the way that is gruesome and sad even if it ultimately accomplishes a good thing.