The Ukrainian Stray Dog Problem
October 24th, 2011 | 2 comments
Apparently the Ukraine is trying to get rid of its stray dogs ahead of Euro 2012.
Animal welfare groups accuse Ukrainian authorities of using illegal and inhumane methods of killing stray dogs that cause long, agonizing deaths. They say dogs are often poisoned or injected with banned substances as officials rush to clear streets ahead of the Euro 2012 soccer championship next summer.
Euro 2012 organizers deny any involvement in a stray eradication campaign.
Full official statistics are hard to come by, but figures and estimates provided to The Associated Press by authorities in the Euro 2012 host cities of Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Lviv show more than 9,000 dogs have been put to death over the past year. Animal protection groups believe the number is far higher.
“It’s a slaughterhouse,” said Asya Serpinska, head of the Ukrainian Association of Animal Protection Organizations. “We are convinced that there is an unofficial order to purge Euro cities of stray animals so that, God forbid, some stray dog doesn’t bite some foreigner.”
Ukraine has a large stray dog population, estimated at tens of thousands in some cities. The dogs, often running in packs, can be seen on streets, in parks and even children’s playgrounds. Nearly 3,000 people reported being bitten by stray dogs last year in Kiev and about 1,900 in Kharkiv, according to city officials.
On paper, officials have embraced the internationally accepted practice of sterilizing strays, then releasing them into areas where they pose no public threat, placing them in shelters or finding them homes. Sick or aggressive dogs are humanely euthanized.
But in reality, activists contend, a stray dog handled by authorities has little chance of survival. The only question, they say, is how much it will suffer before it dies. Shelters are virtually nonexistent, pet adoption unpopular and sterilization costly; most dogs are simply put down, they say.
“It’s capture and kill,” said John Ruane of Naturewatch, a British-based animal welfare group that monitors the situation in Ukraine. “It’s just barbaric.”
When I lived in Bulgaria, it wasn’t uncommon to see packs of stay dogs roaming the streets of Sofia. (It wasn’t as bad in smaller cities but still existed.) It seemed that every neighborhood had at least one or two packs of dogs that would roam the streets looking for something to eat. When I lived in an area called Lozenets, the pack lived under a balcony of a nearby apartment building. While I lived there one of the dogs gave birth to a litter of six puppies.
The dogs were anything but aggressive. If they did approach you, their heads would be down and you could tell by the skittish way they walked that they were on edge. All you had to do was raise your hand and pretend you were throwing a rock and the dogs would scatter. And they were so hungry they’d eat just about anything. Sometimes if the pack was congregating near our apartment building, we’d drop chunks of stale bread from our apartment five stories up. The dogs would woof it down like we had just thrown them pieces of raw meat. As far as I could tell, there was never any effort made by the city to round them up. Animal shelters in that part of the world were unheard of.
While I don’t know how the packs of stray dogs in the Ukraine are different than their counterparts in Bulgaria, I don’t understand why animal rights activists are upset that the dogs are being killed. While I don’t condone the inhumane methods of killing stray dogs mentioned in the article, having packs of dogs run wild on the streets isn’t good for anyone. The dogs in Sofia were filthy, disease ridden, and looked like they were constantly starving. I don’t see why they be treated any better in the Ukraine. Simply sterilizing strays and releasing them “into areas where they pose no public threat” like the animal rights activists want just stops them from reproducing. It does nothing to feed or shelter the animals. Releasing serialized animals and letting them fend for themselves doesn’t strike me as being that humane.
Sadly, like Bulgaria, it appears the stay dog problem is more of a cultural issue than anything. Unless Ukrainians are willing to invest in real animal shelters and humanly euthanize the dogs, it’s going to return and persist long after Euro 2012 is over.
Indeed the stray dogs are generally not agressive in Ukraine as well they behave as their Bulgarian counterparts.
I guess the problem does not comes from the decision of getting rid of this population of dogs, it is indeed logical.
The only way to deal with that problem is as they say sterilization , first of all and probabely euthanasia .
In India the British soldiers killed massively strayed dogs 100 years go and they didn’t care of doing it in a civilized way …. They just shooted them .
So this is not brand new problem.
The question in Ukraine is that THEY WANT DELIBERATELY TO MAKE THE ANIMALS SUFFERING. It is a perversion , that’s what nobody gets unless you live there. The ukrainians are miserable people , half-crazy with big psychiatric problems . They burn alive animals , they can open them while they are also alive , so the problem is that it’s going to be a pretext for massive animal cruelty , which is AFAIK a crime in many countries . I mean taking pleasure in making animal suffering.
They can poison them and look at them dying for hours with a cruel and sadic smile. Many Drunkyards . sorts of semi0tramps would be given a few bucks to slaughter dogs and cats and they would do it in the most horrific way . I mean the problem is not stray dogs or cats , the problem is the population of Ukraine who is BELOW the level of animals.
Just think you have a puppy dog you love. He is playing in your garden . Suddenly you see a drunk zombie with his face ravaged by AIDS and diseases moving slowly and catching him with his big vicious hands and trying then to strangle your dog.
That’s what is been done in Ukraine. Some other people volunteer to poison food they throw on th ground no matter a child or anyone would eat it. etc … In my place , one morning , all the inhabitants found their pet dead , lying on the ground because during the night , a group of pur ukrainians idiots had decided to ‘clean’ the area….
so to make it clear before considering the problem of stray dogs , one should consider the problem of Ukrainian population which should be perharps sterilizer and in may casis , euthanized.
The dogs on Ukrainian streets aren’t STRAY – they are FERAL, already born free, dangerous predators in 5-10-20 packs! T
“Indeed the stray dogs are generally not agressive in Ukraine as well they behave as their Bulgarian counterparts.” – This is a LIE and a dangerous LIE!!!!!! Thousands of cases every year. Several LETHAL cases of dog bites over two months in Nikolaev alone! If THIS is not aggressive, WHAT IS AGGRESSIVE?!
“The question in Ukraine is that THEY WANT DELIBERATELY TO MAKE THE ANIMALS SUFFERING.” – BULLSHIT!!!!! We only want our CHILDREN SAFE. We only ask for the dangerous feral dogs to be eliminated from the streets. Our authorities steal money supposedly spent on shelters – so do we have any choice beside looking for anyone to help, be it with poisoning or shooting? 10-20 dogs running into children’s playground, barking, growling, attacking – is this any kind of norm? Looks like the animal protectors in Ukraine and some other countries need to be sterilized – so that the dangerous preference of feral dog rights over human rights isn’t passed to their progeny!
Just think you have a child, a sweet boy or girl. They walk home from school, with a bag of books. They get attacked by 10-20 large feral dogs. Faces scarred forever, hands bitten off, possibly lethal case. WOULD YOU PROTECT THE DOGS WHO MURDER YOUR CHILDREN?!
So to make it clear before considering the problem of FERAL DOGS, consider sterilizing the madmen WHO PLACE DOGS OVER THE LIVES OF CHILDREN