The Wonderwomen of Tg-Jiu

Carmena Serbanoiu and her daughter Patricia along with an animal protection association, Pro Animals Romania, they have founded together, maintains a dog shelter in the city of Tg-Jiu. The shelter is home for about 500 homeless dogs. The shelter was left to be taken care of by the family Serbanoiu already in 2002. Before that the shelter was a so called municipal dog shelter and it was used for collecting stray dogs and leaving them to wait for a painful death.

The first time Carmena ever heard about the destinies of stray dogs was from an animal-friendly person who had told Carmena about the misery of stray dogs in the town. Carmena persuaded the national TV-channel to broadcast news of the strange disappearances and poisonings of stray dogs. That was the beginning of a new life in Carmena's family and also the fight for the welfare of animals. The fight still continues.

The city of Tg-Jiu hasn't participated in any way to cover the maintaining costs of the dog shelter ever since Pro Animals Romania took the shelter under its wings. The city has no particular shelter of its own, they have just killed stray dogs immediately after capturing them for example near some landfills. The piece of land the shelter is located in is owned by the city and for a long time the decision-makers of the city have wanted to take the piece of land to a better use as soon as possible. The conditions at the shelter are very simple and harsh and the new shelter would be more than needed.

It's very hard to get permanent employees to the shelter since the work is hard and the conditions are very simple. That's why Carmena Serbanoiu works almost 24 hours a day at the shelter and also feeds the stray dogs on nearby areas. In addition to the shelter Carmena takes cares of the dogs at her home and over 60 dogs and several cats living across her yard on a fenced area. Some of these animals are always recovering patients. Patricia has helped her mother on a daily basis at the shelter as well as at home. Whenever necessary, Patricia has driven dogs over hundreds of kilometres to a vet and runs errands. Since Autumn 2009 Patricia has studied as well in the veterinary university in Timisoara. For years Carmena's only source of income has been a little boutique that she have rented for another shop-keeper since she hasn’t had any time to run the store themselves.

Since October 2006 Patricia, her friend Diana and three therapy dogs have visited the elderly people every weekend. She also managed the education programme in elementary schools of Tg-Jiu in 2007. The education programme has been forced to put on hold from the beginning of 2008 since there have been no funds to run it. Visits to elderly people stopped also in the beginning of 2009 because the change of management who did not want to continue visits. The education, however, continued from Autumn 2008 since Carmena started to give time to time lectures on animal protection to the students of the University of Tg-Jiu. In addition to all of this Pro Animals Romania takes cares of all the animal protection issues relating to the Gorj County and it's definitely not an easy job to do. Almost every day they receive calls from people who have witnessed different kinds of animal cruelty and almost every time this happens the women are expected to go and check the situation right away. As Pro Animals Romania do not have any official rights to give penalties they have to ask the assistance of police and veterinary in cases of animal abuse.

Already years ago the four cities of Gorj County (excluding Tg-Jiu) agreed on a neutering programme with Pro Animals Romania so that the stray dogs of these cities could be neutered instead of killing them. Unfortunately the decision-makers of these cities change during the years and the new ones may not follow the same paths as the previous ones. Also these "old" decision-makers have a bad habit of changing their minds very often. Sure the problem in Gorj County has also been the fact that the movable clinic that comes to neuter the stray dogs of these cities is not owned by Pro Animals Romania and it makes it difficult to neuter dogs efficiently enough and on a regular basis.

At the moment every city of Gorj County have their own municipal dog shelters to which dogs are collected and  kept in very poor conditions without proper care in addition to dogs being taken to e.g. to the woods to be shot or poisoned. The decision-makers of Tg-Jiu also built a little temporary dog shelter right next to the shelter maintained by Pro Animals Romania and somehow dogs keep disappearing every night – it’s highly unlikely that the dogs are adopted. Also 80 per cent of the dogs of city shelter are sick and would need vet care. The city has built a new big "EU-standard"-shelter where they will soon move the dogs from the current city shelter and start to collect stray dogs from city.

The locals abandon their dogs very often, especially little puppies and puppies with their mothers. It’s very controversial that the pets are not neutered even though it’s well known what it leads to and then the people have the nerve to abandon the puppies even with their mothers to the shelter. And of course, these dogs are abandoned – like always – to the shelter maintained by Pro Animals Romania and not to the "kill shelter" next door. Wonder why it always goes like this? Maybe people still somehow in the back of their mind hope that these dogs would get some kind of a chance to life despite all the controversy.

Carmena and Patricia have fought for years for the neutering of both stray dogs and pets so the reckless reproduction of the dogs would stop. And they still continue this fight since killing the stray dogs won’t solve any problems. If they would give up now, it’d most likely be a death blow to all the things the women have sacrificed their own lives for all these years. A private dog shelter with a veterinary clinic of their own would give Pro Animals Romania the opportunity to negotiate about the neutering programme of stray dogs in Gorj County in a way that wouldn’t leave any questions on behalf of the decision-makers. It would also encourage the locals to understand the animal rights better since the new shelter would give Pro Animals Romania the tools to educate the locals to treat animals in a way the animal welfare law requires.

The new shelter project of Pro Animals Romania started in April 2011 and here is more information of the new shelter project.

Further information: 

Homepage of Pro Animals Romania

Animal Protection Law in Romania

History of municipal activitys in Tg-Jiu concerning stray dog problem in 1999-2008

Press articles of Pro Animals Romania and stray dogs in Gorj County during years 2000-2009

Map of Romania. Targu-Jiu (Tg-Jiu) is situated in south-west of Romania
in Gorj county, see county map.