Help A Romanian Stray: July 2012

ANU organization, Animals need us - Brasov, is a small organization with only a handful of volunteers. They all have jobs, and help in their "spare time". ANU has no shelter of its own, so they had to struggle hard with everything that happened.

To understand why something like this has happened (probably in more places than just Sacele) you need to understand that 2012 is a year when elections take place in Romania. In June Romania had local elections where the mayors were elected. After that the president was suspended. One party, made the problem of the strays their motto, "We will kill all the stray dogs and get rid of them all for good". They started to do it before the elections so that people would see that they meant it, without any interest in what the few laws that Romania has say. They started to catch dogs from the streets, without having a legal shelter to take them to, so they improvised. The Sacele illegal shelter was only one that ANU happened to find.

About 40 dogs were caught between the 12th and 13th of April. The location where they took the dogs was a secret (and it is obvious why, the conditions were terrible and they wanted to kill the dogs to get rid of them). ANU found this location with much difficulty, and when they did, there were only 19 dogs left. What happened with the others...one can only guess. The people of ANU hope that most of them escaped, as some other dogs did after they were found. The caretaker told ANU that there were about 40 initially, and some of them escaped, some of them died (there were very rough fights in there). Imagine 40 dogs in one room; males, females, puppies, females in heat... one female even gave birth in there.

About the 19 dogs that ANU found

One was adopted, 2 dogs had broken legs and opened fractures, so they were considered medical emergencies. ANU managed to get an other organization to take them, since they do not have a space of their own, unfortunately this organization did not want to get involved more than that because there was a political issue involved. In the end the people of ANU got them to take the two injured dogs.

2 dogs were rescued by some other good hearted people; the female that gave birth and the surviving puppy (unfortunately he died later) and a German Shepard mix. 5 dogs escaped, some of them have been seen back in the neighbourhood that they were taken from. The remaining 9 dogs ANU managed to get out themselves. Now ANU has 8 adult dogs that nobody wants.