A breakthrough or a palliative?

Yesterday the first Municipal Animal Shelter was launched in Kharkiv. Kharkiv must be envied by many Ukrainian cities, especially the residents with a sympathetic attitude to the problem. At first glance, there are things to be proud of: the complex is designed for about 500 dogs and 50 cats. The facilities include an up-to-date veterinary clinic, zones for walking of the animals, the training ground, and quarantine block. In a word, this is a European-like shelter. According to the Kharkiv-2012 Media Center, there is no analogous shelter in any other Ukrainian cities, except for Kyiv. It seems to be the first swallow, a real paradise for Kharkiv four-legged strays. But there is a slight objection.

The center will function as an open-door shelter, accepting every stray that arrives. Ukrainians perceive the word “shelter” nearly as an exotic phenomenon, considering it a priori good for the animals, imagining pictures of mercy and help, a dog-and-cat idyll. In other countries the shelters are strictly divided into two types, shelters accepting every stray and limited ones. There is an essential difference between them: the second one does not euthanize healthy animals, whereas the first kills the former “residents” to provide space for newcomers. As a rule, no-kill shelters are run by NGOs and private individuals, whereas the kill shelters are municipal. The private shelters stop accepting animals as soon as they are full, but the lucky ones who get there are kept in the shelter till the last day of their lives. In the municipal shelters, unless an animal finds a new home within a strictly defined term, it will be killed. But in the countries where the problem of stray animals has been resolved in a humane way for many years, the system is organized in such a way that only a few animals get killed.

Eloquent is the fact that an incinerator was one of the first purchases of the center. And no one doubts that buying it is a top priority: according to the presented official stats, homes are found only for 5 percent of the caught and sent to the animal center, the rest 95 percent are put away. According to the estimates of animal advocates, most of these five percent are dogs under guardianship, i.e., guardians take care of them in the street, and after the animals are caught, they purposefully look for them and take them home. So, the shelter puts little effort in finding a home for their residents.

And whom should the employees of the center promote? Half-starved, dirty, mad with fright animals? Eyewitnesses evidence that the animals who escaped the center were exhausted and panic-stricken and reacted even to the irritants to which they used to be indifferent. Apparently, only people think that the procedure of capture is humane, for animals it remains an indelible psychological trauma.

The exhaustion of the animals can also be explained: as a rule, the dogs refuse to eat the cheap pet food purchased for them, and there is no alternative provided. Because the center is lacking personnel, the habit of walking the animals is not cultivated. They drop in the enclosures they are living in.

As a result, for a potential owner to get a clean, healthy, and sociable animal, the volunteers take the dogs to their homes for temporary keeping, maintain them, provide treatment, sterilize the animals at their own cost, and find them a home on their own. But the volunteers of Kharkiv animal protection organizations have been doing this beyond the shelter, with the only difference: now they don’t take the dogs directly from the street. But there is no essential difference between a street and a shelter dog, except for the money the city budget spends for capturing and keeping the animal in a shelter. It turns out that the state pays the animal control service and animal keeping facility, whereas the volunteers get the dogs into shape free of charge.

Besides, there are numerous cases when the animal control service does not bring the captured animals to the shelter, killing them on spot or on the way to the burial ground for animal refuse. Proof of this are numerous appeals of the citizens who witnessed the capture, were eager to take the animal home and did not find it in the shelter. But it is the animal control service to be blamed. Will anything change, except for the nice-looking facade of the shelter and increased incoming of the animals to be killed, after June 13 when covered and equipped premises will start operating? Will the percentage of the animals adopted from the shelter rise? Will they freak out less in the shelter after the humane procedure of capturing? Will the shelter staff increase enough to pay attention to the poor animals? Apparently, these are rhetorical questions.

Surely, the shelter, i.e., the Animal Center is making the city look more beautiful and comfortable for people. But is it bringing at least a tiny bit of happiness for homeless dogs and cats?

Indisputably, compared to the cities where stray animals are still killed with sticks in the streets in an old-fashioned manner, people also shoot at them with dithylinum, forbidden by law, yet very popular among the communal services, the opening of the Kharkiv Municipal Animal Center is a breakthrough to the new level of treating animals. But in our opinion, every city resident should go on a tour behind the fence of the dog paradise to find out the real price of the beautiful fairy-tale and absence of animals in the city streets.

P.S.: Most important thing to remember is that the animals from the Kharkiv shelter are waiting for their owners and volunteers. Tel.: (0572) 94-35-14, (057) 751-73-30