After a three-day search in Plovdiv’s “Karshiyaka” district, volunteers rescued a stray dog with its tail docked. This happened after a woman from Plovdiv reported on social networks.
17-year-old Bozhidara Ilcheva came across the confused and in pain animal on her way to work on a rainy December 1, and the sight was terrifying: Someone had cut off the tail of the dog, who was wandering helplessly on the sidewalk in Plovdiv’s “Karshiyaka” district .
In an attempt to save the dying man’s life, she signals the emergency telephone, from where they promise her that they will pass the case on to the competent municipality.
Bozhidara waits in the rain for an hour and 20 minutes. Nobody shows up.
The girl is at an impasse and decides to look for like-minded people on social networks. Bozhidara’s post with Nayden bleeding quickly garnered hundreds of comments, which appealed to urgently provide adequate help to the injured animal. And minutes after posting, volunteers head to the site. But there is no trace of the dog.
They embark on a search that continues into the night and ends in vain. Every step of the volunteers is monitored in real time, and some commentators express the wish that “this time the municipality may have done its job and collected the dog”. Still others angrily demand tougher laws to protect animals, because aggression against the homeless is scary.
The disappointment is great, but the next day the report arrives that the dog has been sighted again and the searches resume. Throughout the day and again until midnight, groups of people scoured gardens, bushes, construction sites and parking lots, expecting to find the homeless man, but this time they hit a rock. The discussion under Bozhidara’s post doesn’t stop, and people are ready to keep looking for him as long as necessary to help him.
Meanwhile, it has been learned that he has been sighted in multiple places and stabbed: no one has done anything to ease his suffering.
Only on the third day, again after a complaint, the homeless man was found exhausted and almost passed out next to the guardrail that separated the lanes on “Bulgaria” Blvd. from Simona Petkova. That’s how he got his name: found.
One of hundreds of unfortunate homeless people in Plovdiv has been found. It looks like a hunting dog, with the habits of a pet. It came from someone’s house. The time spent on the road, despondency and hunger had ruined his health.
He is now admitted to the Zaravet clinic and his two-week treatment is already giving results and demonstrating his will to live. Doctors say he “hit the jackpot” because he was found.
Nobody’s dog has been found. He is looking for a temporary or permanent home where a special person or family will give him love and acceptance. Otherwise, he returns to the square, where hunger and dangers await him.
The amount for its treatment is collected by volunteers. It is grossly inadequate for all that it has. And anyone who wants to help homeless Naiden financially can donate to the account of the “Zaravet” clinic:
IBAN: BG06BPBI 7924 1067 2226 02
BIC code: BPBIBGSF
Ground “Found”
What’s wrong with us?
We raise a pet until it ceases to meet our expectations. So we get rid of him or his children: we throw the helpless litter next to a container or drown it. We tie up the trash animal in the forest while it looks adoringly at us, and carefully secure the knot so it doesn’t escape. Or we cut off its ears and hang it from a tree in a sack, giving it no chance of survival.
In the “more humane” case, we load the gullible creature into a car, drive it many miles from home, and abandon it in an unfamiliar location, unprepared to survive on its own.
What’s wrong with us? What’s wrong with us?
One of the important things that the European Union and the Member States have adopted in 2020 is that they take full account of the welfare requirements for animals as sentient beings identical to humans.
How a dog felt with its tail docked, walking for three days on the street and among people who didn’t pay attention to it. Maybe it’s like having your ear cut off and suffering for days.
That’s why I think we need to be alarmed as a matter of urgency.
We have lost our humanity if we start to look away selflessly from the vulnerable, the suffering and the weak.
The thought is frightening, especially since the “Mecho” case has not yet died down, and only a few days ago there was also a protest in defense of stray animals. Mecho was brutally tortured because he had the unfortunate luck of living on the street. His tormentor had the unfortunate luck of being filmed. He says he is sorry, even though the screams and moans of tortured animals have been heard from his house for months and the reports from the neighbors have been in vain.
In 2021, on Christmas Eve, a driver deliberately ran over the dog Roska in the Pazardzhik village of Malo Konare. Roska went to a foster home. The driver has disappeared.
However, no cameras caught the dog tormentor Nayden. Someone cut off his tail because he could, because it was “fun” and because they were sure they wouldn’t get caught. And if he gets caught, he’ll probably get away with it.
We urgently need to be alarmed because cases of violence are more and more frequent. Every year dogs and cats are poisoned en masse, beaten to death, suffocated or, even more horribly, burned or buried alive. These criminal practices aren’t just scary. They are a serious sign of permanent damage to society.
The time has come for the police and institutions to look more seriously at this aggression and beyond, because both psychology and practice show that people who torture or kill animals are dangerous and these acts of violence are often harbingers of a crime more serious.
They say that the development of a society depends on the attitude towards the neediest and most vulnerable, and in our country the mayors, like that of Krichim, have banned the feeding of stray animals. In 2012, the director of the OP “Zooveterinary Complex” Ivan Shikov asked the same, because “this hasn’t solved the problem” with homelessness.
And there’s a problem, and it’s not in the creatures wandering and abandoned on the streets. The problem is us, the people who don’t chip our pets, throw them away irresponsibly, and torture them.
We suffer from intolerance, apathy, aggression, insensitivity and lack of responsibility towards our common home: Bulgaria. We are so used to injustices that we have somehow accepted them as the norm.
Therefore, we must urgently be alarmed. Because it is not normal to remain indifferent to suffering, losing the sense of justice. It’s not normal to torture animals because it’s “fun”.
The silence and immobilism of those responsible in the institutions are not normal.
It’s not normal to have no consequences.
We have learned not to take responsibility, it is not normal and we are all complicit in our inaction.
Do we know the Animal Welfare Act?
The European Union has some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world. They are reflected in the so-called “five freedoms” – freedom from hunger and thirst; freedom from discomfort; freedom from pain, wounds and disease; freedom to express one’s natural behavior; freedom from fear and stress. And in February 2020, MPs adopted a resolution declaring animal registration mandatory and penalties for violations.
Bulgaria has been trying to be a modern European country for 15 years, but there are no stray animals west of us.
In our country, the problem has not been solved for decades, and the presence of abandoned homeless people brings discomfort to society, endangering people’s lives and health.
It is known that they can be carriers of diseases that threaten humans: echinococcosis (dog tapeworm), brucellosis, microsporia, demodicosis, rabies, etc. Fear of them increases social tension.
Therefore, in order to react appropriately to any situation, we need to know the Animal Welfare Act*, the Veterinary Medicine Act, as well as the Ordinance on the Control of the Population of Stray Dogs and Cats and on the Regulation of the Breeding of Dogs and Cats domestic workers on the territory of a Plovdiv municipality.
And the law prohibits and provides penalties for:
– the inhumane treatment of animals – this is causing pain or suffering to an animal or causing severe fear;
– cruelty to animals – any action or inaction that causes prolonged or repeated suffering to the animal, or permanent damage to its health or stress;
– special cruelty to animals – the intentional cause of the death of animals;
– intentionally cause serious and permanent harm to animals; the organization of fights between animals; the killing of stray, domesticated or captive animals.
It also obliges pet owners to register, sterilize and chip them, as well as to raise them according to humane principles and, consequently, with their physiological and behavioral characteristics.
If an animal owner cannot care for it, they are obligated to give it to a kennel, rescue center or new owner to raise it humanely.
Otherwise, the animal becomes another abandoned animal.
Again according to the law, anyone who finds a sick or injured stray is obliged to notify the kennel, the competent local authorities, the Regional Directorate of Food Safety, the Regional Directorate of the Ministry of the Interior or the Territorial Directorates of the Forestry Executive Agency.
According to the art. 16, paragraph 2 and par. 3 of the same law, after each report of a sick or injured dog, the local institutions in charge have the obligation to provide veterinary medical first aid and to place the dog in a kennel or other structure, as well as to provide for its care.
*The animal protection law in our country has been in force since 31.01.2008
