You see them everywhere. Dogs wandering around without a visible goal in streets and parks, squares and promenades. Running run up and down, left and right. Following an unseen trace. Running distraught and distressed. Hungry and thirsty. Wearing a blue, a red or a brown collar. The once loved but now abandoned pets. The innocent victims of the economic crisis in Greece. Sniffing desperately the asphalt and pavement slabs. Trying at all costs to detect a known scent. The footprint of their owner. A known, even slightly faint smell that will lead them back home.
However. No matter how zealously they try their search turns in vain… The once loved but now abandoned pets, the innocent victims of the big economic crisis that plagues Greece.
Dozens? hundreds? Thousands? Dogs of all ages and breeds have been abandoned in the last two years by their owners who can no longer afford to feed and care for them. At the same time animal welfare organizations speak actually of “hundreds of dogs that are found tied to benches, trees and lampposts” and have been picked up by such groups.
Daily Kathimerini in an excellent article “Number of abandoned dogs skyrocketing ” addresses the dramatic increase of abandoned pets in times of crisis and recession.
“The situation is completely out of control,” Christiana Kalogeropoulou of nonprofit group Stray.gr. told Kathimerini “Every effort made in the past to change people’s mentalities and get the state to take some responsibility for the situation has been all but forgotten.”
Greek animal rights groups are in dire straits over a combination of major funding cutbacks, dwindling donations and a rising number of strays, especially dogs.
Even thought municipalities receive EU funds for the benefit of strays, money hardly lands at the animal welfare organizations in Greece
According to Grigoris Gourdomichalis, head of the Environmental Association for the Municipalities of Athens and Piraeus, local authorities have stopped funding animal rescue efforts since 2009, with his group, which is the largest of its kind in the country, having received no money from the state in the past three years, even though it is legally entitled to subsidies of 70 percent of its annual budget.
“It makes sense given that for a decision to be executed it needs to be approved by the ministries of Interior, Finance and Agricultural Development. It takes nine days for a single decision to move up one rung on the ladder,” said Gourdomichalis.
The group continues to feed, inoculate and neuter strays in the 18 municipalities it covers in Athens and Piraeus, but Gourdomichalis said, “We are carrying out our duties with extreme difficulty at a time when the number of strays on the streets is skyrocketing and there is a distemper epidemic, which is one of the leading causes of canine deaths.” (Read the Full Article Here)
At the same time, the incidents of poisoning stray dogs are taking the form of a snowball. The number of complaints reaching daily the Greek animal lovers’ and animal rights’ website adespoto.gr is alarming. For a second time within two weeks animals found a torturing death outside local churches. Outside the church of Metamorphosis, an animal hater had put food containing glass pieces. Outside the church of Agios Nicolaos another culprit poisoned a cat and a pet dog.
Unfortunately also pets with owners fall victim to the fury of animal haters.
