Advocates for abandoned animals needed

Care for abandoned animals is, unfortunately, not a prestigious cause in Ukraine. In contrast to this, no one marvels at private zoos. In fact, no one knows how many of them operate in Ukraine because they were all launched unofficially. Most their inmates are purebred and expensive animals. No one wants to take home a cat or a dog from the street.

In foreign countries the situation is the exact opposite. For example, the newly elected President Barack Obama has promised his daughters to buy a puppy precisely from a shelter, saying that mongrels are of the same breed as he is.

Ukrainian officials have not moved a finger to help abandoned animals, except sending some to shelters to clear the neighborhood around their dachas. In Ukraine all such shelters are municipal property or were founded by NGOs, whereas abroad most are supported through donations and are often founded by celebrities. The result of this system is obvious: there are no homeless dogs on the streets. In the US the environmental police monitors the security of street animals and pets.

Olena Makhova, a volunteer vet with the League for Animal Welfare, Batavia, Ohio, says that the main difference between Ukraine and the US in the sphere of animal protection is that there are many more pertinent laws in America. A lot of work is done by the Animal Cops, a special division of the police force tasked with investigating cases of animal abuse. If they receive a call about someone’s neighbor’s dog howling or that this dog is too thin, the animal cops always check this information and bring the guilty party to justice.

The main rule of animal protection in America is regulation of their population using humane methods. Ukraine’s animal protection activists have been struggling to have this system legally established for several years now. They propose sterilizing homeless animals, as it is done overseas, and pass a law protecting them against abuse.

Makhova says that problems relating to animal protection are handled by a number of societies, along with a network of government-run and private shelters. The one she works with is exists exclusively on donations from individuals and business entities. Every dog has a separate cage, while the cats share their living space with a few others. The cages and the rooms have access to the playground. The rooms are complete with pieces of furniture, toys, towels, trees, and mini-fountains that work in the summer. The animals’ diet consists of quality products. Every day volunteers come to the shelter and take the dogs out, comb the cats, and tidy up the premises. Children often ask their parents to be taken to the shelter instead of buying them a birthday present, so they can have a birthday party right there.

Ukraine has a long way to go to reach this level, although some headway has been made. To begin with, there are an increasing number of people who care for abandoned animals. Several years ago these were mostly elderly individuals, while now they have been joined by the young people who are not afraid to publicly state their attitude to the problem.

I doubt that we would be happy to celebrate our birthdays in such shelters, the way they do in the United States, or that we would be willing to buy presents for them, but I wish to believe that it will be so some day.

COMMENTARY

Tamara TARNAVSKA, president, SOS International Animal Protection Society:

“In Ukraine, there are practically no privately owned shelters for abandoned animals, or ones run by civic organizations, with the exception of one at Pyrohiv, run by SOS, and a municipal shelter in Borodianka. The municipal authorities haven’t provided a red cent toward their maintenance, medical treatment, or sterilization.

“Homeless animals are being destroyed en masse in Borodianka, with huge injections from the city budget. Our estimates show that some 100 million hryvnias has been spent over the past ten year—not to better the maintenance of the shelters but to massacre abandoned animals.

“Regrettably, people in Ukraine are far from taking up the cause of protecting such animals. In 1998 our Society made a documentary, jointly with our German colleagues, about man’s brutal treatment of abandoned animals in Odesa. It was screened in Germany and then the German Association for Animal Protection collected over two million euros and built a shelter and a large sterilization center in Odesa. At present this facility is financed completely by the Germans.

“NGOs have opened shelters in Lviv and Hostomel (near Kyiv). Another one will soon be launched in Kharkiv, and yet none of them is financed from the state budget. Ukrainian bureaucrats are not interested. I can think of only one case of government assistance. Viktor Yushchenko, then head of the National Bank of Ukraine, visited our shelter and helped transfer a horse we were treating to the capital’s hippotherapy center. Today our shelters are jammed. Kyiv authorities have promised to help us by taking massive sterilization measures, but this program is being slowed down, even more so now that we have the economic crisis.

“Should anyone question the way we are using animal protection funds, we are ready to cooperate. Visit us and see for yourself how the animals live in the shelters.”