First of all a bit of history on dogs in Romania.

How did Romania come to have so many stray dogs in its country?

It all started in the 1980s with the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who wanted to see his country develop economically and industrially. For this, he forced families to refocus in cities to go to work, forcing them to abandon their pets, which are prohibited in new buildings. From there, all unsterilized dogs left to their own devices in the wild proliferated without any control from the country.

As the only response to the problem, in 2013 Romania legalized the euthanasia of stray dogs, rather than planning sterilization campaigns. We then go from 60,000 stray dogs in the streets of Bucharest, against 12,000 today.

Specifically, every stray dog ​​found by dogcatchers can be legally euthanized 14 days after capture, if not claimed or adopted. And very often, these 14 days are not respected at all, to the point that some owners do not even have time to find their dog.

The so-called “dying” pounds in the country are doing EVERYTHING to limit access to people. To get in, the hours are very limited and you have to justify yourself with identity documents and possession of the dog, they only allow 20 to 30 minutes to go around, which is impossible, and photos are strictly prohibited..

When they are not euthanized, they leave them to die of starvation or disease. Dogs are crowded together, females, males, puppies, old together, which often leads to fights to the death.

In Bucharest there are 4 pounds, among them, 3 belong to the ASPA (Authority for the Surveillance and Protection of Animals):

Bragadiru: inmates take care of the dogs

Mihailesti: 850 places in this one, it is the largest of the ASPA pounds

Pallady: the smallest pound of the 4

Odai: the latter does not belong to the ASPA, but it is the most recent pound and contains 1500 places

The ASPA begins to make efforts regarding the adoption of dogs, they organize events to promote dogs, they no longer practice euthanasia, and collaborate with associations to get dogs out of the pound. The problem being that they are overcrowded, the conditions of detention sometimes remain abominable for the dogs, as at the pound of Mihailesti..

And who are the dogcatchers? These men paid by the EUROPEAN UNION, with a bonus for each dog brought back?

They are employed by ASPA or by their private subcontracting companies.

They have a quota of dogs to bring back, and to respect them they are sometimes forced to catch dogs that have owners, in a yard or a garden. Because yes, often in Romania, owners leave their dog in front of the house, as a guard dog, without sterilizing them, which also contributes to the massive reproduction and development of the number of stray dogs.

The dogs are caught in a very violent way, and sometimes don’t survive this capture, killing them on the spot, by breaking their neck on the steel butt or by strangling themselves. Of course, the dogcatchers have no knowledge of dogs and there is no veterinarian with them.

Once captured dead or alive (for which they receive a bounty no matter what), the dogs are piled into vans and dragged around town for hours. Some also die during the journey. And for the dogs still alive, they will be left with an accumulation of trauma..

For dogs that are not yet captured and therefore stray/wild in Romania, the life expectancy for them on the street is 2 years… the dogs are in constant survival and are very often run over by cars… is something that really traumatized me when I arrived in the country.

There is also a lot of animal abuse.. in Romania, when a dog is too old, or no longer used for work, it is abandoned, or voluntarily injured.. I have seen very regularly cases of abuse arrive at the shelter, such as Tristan a beautiful greyhound, found abandoned in a house for sale, his two front legs deliberately fractured. Or Sile, a dog that someone wanted to cut the throat of with a knife but failed, leaving him for dead with his wound which later became infected.