13-year-old champions Bucharest strays
Print Edition
WHEN French film actress Brigitte Bardot began in 2001 a campaign to spare the thousands of stray dogs in Romania’s capital Bucharest from being put down, she did it with a US$150,000 donation scheme.
A similar campaign is now being waged by Ana-Maria Ciulcu, a 13-year-old schoolgirl who uses Facebook to appeal to dog lovers all over Europe — and make sure the dogs go to the right homes.
“I like to know that my dogs will be spoiled, and will be allowed to sit on the sofa,” Ana-Maria said. “So one of my first questions would be: ‘Are you going to chain him?’”
Ana-Maria speaks fluent German and is Internet savvy, and she’s used both to rescue 150 strays and ship them to Germany, Austria and Belgium since September.
But Bucharest’s state-funded wards hold 2,800 dogs, and 2,000 have been euthanized in the past two months, says Romania’s Authority for Animal Surveillance and Protection.
Some 60,000 strays roam Bucharest. Last year, a 4-year-old boy died after he was mauled by a stray beside a Bucharest park. Afterward, the authorities began enforcing euthanasia rules.
The strays are thought to be a legacy of the former leader Nicolae Ceausescu’s decision to bulldoze Bucharest’s historic center in the 1980s to make way for a gargantuan “House of the People.” Thousands of guard dogs were abandoned by residents forcibly relocated.
Ana-Maria collects strays that then go to a private shelter or the backyard of her home on the capital’s outskirts.
She has them vaccinated, given microchip tags and gets passports for them. All costs, bar transport to new homes, are covered by her family.
Ana-Maria believes keeping dogs in state-funded shelters is just an extermination plan.
“Dogs can’t live packed together,” she said. “They need affection.”
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