Greetings from Tg-Jiu shelter

The cooling and rainy weather have taken their toll already for a while in the daily routines of the shelter. Although in daytime it’s still warm, the nights are getting already very chilly. Carmena told that the dogs have started to gather up extra supply for the winter and eat almost twice as much as on a warm season. Carmena and Patricia also try to get leftover food for dogs from restaurants and markets. This way the can add something to the usual meals that consist of dry dog food.

As soon as Mauri Ojala has filled his truck with aid to be taken to Romania and gathered up some funds for the travelling costs we will sent some dog food for winter from Finland. In addition to taking the dog food donated by Wipet Oy to Tg-Jiu, he will take some aid to the Romani children of his home village in Romania. Mauri has already managed to take an aid load to Albany in between these “gigs”. By the way, you can remember the children of the poorest villages of Romania on Christmas with a gift. More information here.

Carmena also told that the threat of “wiping out” the current shelter has become depressingly obvious once again. The city shelter next to Pro Animals Romania’s shelter will be moved elsewhere still during this year. The City Hall of Tg-Jiu has given the “responsibility” of maintaining the shelter to a company whose managers have some kind of relations with Carmena. They had told her that the piece of land the current shelter is located on has already been set to build houses on and the sale of the yard has been planned to start soon. Carmena and Patricia have composed a letter to the City Hall pleading the city to donate land for Pro Animals Romania for the new private shelter. The estimate to succeed in this task is about two percent at most but we have to use every possible effort we can now. Carmena also asked me some views of the future. She asked how much are we able to help them in building the new shelter if the city would grant the piece of land for them but at the same time is most likely to demand that the building would start immediately. It is hard for me to predict the future but of course I promised that we will do our best for the new shelter here in Finland. Sure we also have some capita for the new shelter already.

A lot of puppies are continuously abandoned to Tg-Jiu shelter but luckily some dogs have also been adopted during the autumn. Every month badly injured dogs are abandoned to the shelter. Here are a couple of pictures of the latest case:

A case from the city shelter

Inkeri and Tuuli already told in their greetings about a case in which a carload full of dogs was brought to the city shelter. Some of these dogs were “owned” by a gipsy woman. This is how it went. On a late afternoon an old gipsy woman came behind the gates of the city shelter and kept observing the dogs inside. Eventually the old woman ran hysterically to Carmena and told that the dog catchers had taken eight dogs from her yard. Apparently the gipsy woman had a pack of dogs she had tried to look after but the neighbours had constantly made a complaint of the dogs. Eventually the dog catchers had appeared to the woman’s home and took eight of the dogs telling that they’ll be taking them to the city shelter and will take good care of them.

When the woman realized that she couldn’t find her dogs from the city shelter she had naturally gotten badly scared and ran to Carmena for help. Carmena immediately contacted the manager of the dog catchers and asked them to bring all the dogs they had caught that day to Tg-Jiu shelter. If she wouldn’t see the dogs, Carmena threatened to make some noise out of the case. All the dogs that are caught from the city streets aren’t brought to the city shelter, most of them just disappear. The current city shelter acts almost as a coulisse trying to keep the animal-lovers and activists out of the decision-makers’ backs.

Eventually the carriage of the dog catchers arrived. The cage the dogs are put into was once again full of dogs in pure panic. Among these dogs were the eight dogs that belonged to the gipsy woman and you can imagine how happy the dogs were to see their beloved owner! Here are some photos of the “carload of dogs”.

Of the difficulty to cooperate with the decision-makers

It’s sad that the decision-makers of Tg-Jiu aren’t capable to cooperate with Pro Animals Romania. Here’s one good example once again. You might remember how we were sent away after requesting an audience with the mayor on our shelter visit in September. Carmena has also repeatedly for years requested for a meeting with the mayor so they could discuss the animal protection issues. In vain. The mayor keeps telling to ask help from his employees which is completely useless since the mayor is the only one making decisions in the city.

But to the point. After discovering the appalling treatment towards abandoned horses in Tg-Jiu Pro Animals Finland registered association sent an email to the city government. In our protest we demanded improvement to the situation of the horses. And look what happened! Our letter had been published, distorted, in a local newspaper in Tg-Jiu. In the article we are accused for criticizing the locals for their ways of acting from far away and not coming on the spot to solve problems in good spirit. We are said to be wolves in sheep’s clothes and claimed this way to wreck every animal-lovers’ dignity. The article is related to a campaign against animals – especially horses – which has been going on for over a month now in this particular newspaper.

This campaign has its roots on a motorcycle accident happened in September. In this accident the daughter of the richest man of the city was killed and her boyfriend was badly injured. The cause of the accident and allegedly guilty for it was a horse that walked towards the motorcycle on the road and caused the accident. However, the fact that the motorcycle was driving 230 km/h when the accident happened had nothing to do with it apparently. And of course, the guilty had the most severe sentence possible: the horse was executed though it hadn’t gotten one single scratch in the accident. After the incident writings against horses have appeared almost on a daily basis. The reporter behind these articles isn’t capable of giving any kind of solution to these problems; the reporter just keeps accusing one instance at a time for these problems. You can read the articles here.

Sure we sent our reply to the newspaper to separate “facts from fiction” and especially tell that already for several years we have actually tried to find solutions and help for the animal protection problems of Tg-Jiu from Finland but as long as the authorities refuse to cooperate it’s very hard to “walk hand in hand” and address the problems efficiently enough. The open reply was of course sent as a copy also to other newspapers of Gorj County and the government of Tg-Jiu. We’ll see if there’s one line of our reply in any newspapers.

WSPA to visit in Tg-Jiu

Tracey Hampton, the representative of WSPA (World Society for the Protection of Animals) sent me email about a month ago. Tracey told me that she’s going to Romania on animal welfare matters still during the year and would also like to meet the representatives of Pro Animals’ and visit in Tg-Jiu. Unfortunately I’m not able to make it unless there’s a chance of meeting Tracey in Bucharest. Of course we very much wish that in future WSPA could impact more efficiently on the animal protection issues of Romania and especially on improving them.

New members are welcome to join the PAFi-team!

With our current PAFi-team members we have pondered how we could enhance PAFi’s activity to have the shelter dogs’ welfare secured and to help Pro Animals Romania to fight for the animal rights. We concluded that to benefit the things mentioned we could have more local activity in different areas. Now we have team members in Helsinki area, Tampere, Kymenlaakso, Lapland and Päijät-Häme. If you happen to live in some of these areas and would like to participate locally in arranging e.g. sales, flea markets or wish to be in functions telling others of our activity and distribute flyers, please, do contact us right away! Even if you don’t live in areas mentioned above you have the possibility to set up some local activity, if you want. You can do a lot of things for Tg-Jiu shelter without having had an in-depth look at Pro Animals’ activity. I’m sure everyone knows the basic facts of our activity and of course everyone can always ask help from our other team members.

Christmas sales

PAFi has intended to participate in several Christmas sales for Tg-Jiu shelter and we will gladly accept handicrafts to be sold. I’m sure there will be demand for e.g. handmade mittens, socks, jewellery, Christmas ornaments and cards at Christmas sales. If you have such large production you could maybe donate something for our sales, please, don’t hesitate to tell us about it. Of course there’s also the possibility that you could participate in your own area in Christmas sales and give some of the profits for Tg-Jiu shelter.

National money collection licence

The State Provincial Office of Southern Finland has granted Pro Animals Finland registered association on October 24^th 2008 a nationwide money collection licence from November 1^st 2008 to October 31^st 2009. The licence number is OKH554A / ESLH-2008-09133/Tu-52. For PAFi it’s already third consecutive nationwide licence despite “our young age” and we greatly value it.

Homecoming of Inkeri and Tuuli

In a couple of days Inkeri and Tuuli will return from their long trip in Tg-Jiu to their homes in Finland. We are enthusiastically longing to hear the thorough report from their journey and of course we are already planning how we could have their experiences and knowledge spread nationwide. Of course we will let Inkeri and Tuuli have a little breather after their hard work but I’m sure we’ll hear more about the experiences of these young ladies. Sure, we also hope that this would be the opening for future volunteer job trainers at the shelter and not the last time. You can read more of Inkeri and Tuuli’s experiences from Tg-Jiu shelter so far from here. Welcome home Inkeri and Tuuli!

I want to conclude this newsletter in wise words of Jane Goodall:

"When there are tears in the eyes there is a rainbow in the heart!" 

-Kiia-