Our work in Romania
Helping dogs and children in Romania.
During our visits to Romania, we visit public shelters. The Romanian stray dog policy is capture, hold and kill. The government paid dog catchers catch the dogs on dog poles, not in a humane manner, the dogs screaming in fear, and the dogs are then taken in vans to the public shelters.
The conditions in many of these is simply horrific. We have worked with our rescuers to try to improve conditions, or expose the shelters.
Many of the shelter staff simply do not care about the dogs. Dogs in public shelters eat each other in hunger, disease is rife and the puppies die. Not every public shelter is like this, but many are.
The law is that the dogs are held in the shelter for up to 14 days. After 14 days they are killed – and not using the kind injection that is used in the civilised world.
In our visit in April 2017, we went to Mihailesti public shelter in Bucharest. Whilst it is clean, and the staff do care about the dogs, it is still a kill shelter. If the dogs are not adopted, after 14 days, they are killed here. Disease is rife, and the pups cannot survive.
The kill list is long. It is our dilemma which dogs to take out – we think that it is not our right to choose who will live and die. We reserved and took out 14 dogs who are now in our rescuers care. It is heatbreaking to know what has happened to the rest of them: because the government should instil a national neuter programme.
The rest of the world knows that capture and kill does not work – when will the Romanian government wake up?
We care about the children too
At Easter and Christmas each year, we take donations from everyone across the UK over to Romania. With our rescuers help, we go to the rural villages, to abused childrens homes and to orphanages and share these special celebrations with the children. Romania is a religious country, and these two times of year are celebrated across the country. At Easter in April 2017, we went to Romania to meet some of these children. We took Easter eggs from the UK and shoeboxes filled with gifts. It was an emotional time, and also a sad realisation that these children had no idea how to show a dog love. When we knelt down to hug stray dogs, the look on their faces was as though we were from another planet – and it really hit us this day, that the children are simply not educated – no one tells them how to treat a dog with love and care.