Our organization, with great concern has received complaints and video evidence of how the shelter / NGO “Prishtina Dog Shelter” has collected healthy, non-aggressive and treated dogs (castrated, neutered and vaccinated against rabies) for no reason, changing the location of dogs and using them for personal gain.
The shelter in question is managed by incompetent people who have no consistent plan for the dogs it keeps and operates without notifying the competent authorities for the dogs it keeps.
The shelter, registered as a NGO, ‘Prishtina Dog Shelter’, has been taking dogs for some time and allegedly helping them, but we have often had cases (and evidence of people and NGOs trying to help them properly) that dogs that are kept there for a long time, were released in places completely different from where they were taken and for which the shelter has no further monitoring mechanism.
The shelter in question does whatever it wants with dogs and is really worrying about how most shelters in Kosovo work.
The shelter / NGO ‘Prishtina Dog Shelter’, and the shelter ‘Kater Putrat’ in Ferizaj have not received help from any organization and serious individuals who have tried to help them with medical treatments and adoptions of dogs. Poorly managed shelters take advantage of the situation to always remain in a terrible state because they have realized that this way, they can benefit more by being victimized and abusing the kindness of people who do not live in Kosovo and who finance, without knowing the whole truth.
Also, the same shelter, ignored the invitation of the mayor of Prishtina (on January 28, 2022), to meet about this situation, but acted on its own, without agreeing with any institution beforehand. Our questions are:
- Why are some individuals trying to hinder inter-institutional coordination from addressing this issue at the root of the problem?
- Isn’t serious institutional commitment exactly what activists have been demanding for years?
- Is not the welfare of animals at the core of their work and commitment, as they have proclaimed for years?
This negligence of some individuals, together with the actions they take, raises doubts about their work and puts into extreme question the purpose of their work for the good of the animals.
Our organization has reported (not for the first time) the shelter “Prishtina Dog Shelter” and has asked this time from the inspectors to:
- Return the Germia dogs to where they were taken
- To request evidence of medical-veterinary treatment for each dog there and to report to the FVA and the Municipality when the dogs are released in case of their temporary treatment.
- Register all shelter dogs (and not just Prishtina Dog Shelter, but all)
- Inspect this (and other) shelter every third month to ensure the full well-being of the animals sheltered.
KFVA inspectors have reported that today the dogs that were taken from Gërmia park have been released but we still do not have photos or evidence and until all the dogs return to their place, we will not stop. If the shelter manager does not return the dogs, we have gathered enough evidence to act based on the law in force against any kind of animal abuse.
Shelters that keep dogs / animals for a long time and then release them back on the streets, will be reported by our organization to the responsible bodies under the Law on Animal Welfare and the Law on Veterinary, because the animals will be endangered on the streets by cars and people as they have lived in a shelter all their lives and do not have the experience to return to life on the street. Dogs taken to shelters or care should be kept until adoptive parents/houses are found and provided with full well-being.
It’s a no go that ‘Prishtina Dog Shelter’ or anyone else take dogs without any plan until they have filled their bank accounts and then release those dogs on the street without mercy and significantly compromising their well-being.
Moreover, citizens have often been lied to, and continue to be lied to (both by institutions and by various individuals), that dog shelters are the only solution for the stray dog problem in Kosovo. This is not true at all, as evidenced by the tens of hundreds of experts in this field, that shelters are just one link in a much broader system. So, it suits someone that the state invests ONLY in shelters, when it has already been proven that shelters alone cannot solve this problem.
Even if all the dogs that are currently on the street are housed, for a while, we will still have dogs on the street, as the source of the problem is not being addressed, which is 1) the abandonment of dogs by irresponsible owners (people) and 2) Uncontrolled breeding and sale of dogs. Without focusing on these sources of the problem, any other measures taken will not be sustainable and successful in reducing the number of dogs on the streets.
Finally, we remind you that our organization in the proposal for a National Strategy for the management of the population of dogs with and without keepers (owners=companion animals), has included support for current shelters that do a good work, but this must be done with the principles of transparency, professionalism and accountability.
We thank KFVA for their intervention and the inspection visit and we urge that KFVA inspects all shelters in Kosovo after also the new regulation will be in force for shelter criteria and condition.