Great challenges ahead of us
In practice the current shelter is owned by the city of Tg-Jiu. However, Pro Animals Romania has taken care of the shelter and its hundreds of dogs already since the year 2002. The city of Tg-Jiu hasn't participated in maintaining the shelter or covering any costs during these years. Fortunately the city of Tg-Jiu hasn't forced Pro Animals Romania to pay any rent for using the shelter. Already for several years the city of Tg-Jiu has tried to evict the shelter dogs away from the current area so the land could be taken to a better use by selling it to build new houses. Carmena Serbanoiu and her daughter Patricia have fought all these years for the lives of the shelter dogs - and won for the time being.
The current shelter is so simple and primitive that it can't be maintained that way forever. It should be completely renovated or a new shelter should be built preferably to a more peaceful area. There's a busy road in front of the current shelter which means e.g. that the guardian dogs are in constant danger of getting run over. The location of the shelter isn't good in any other way either since behind it lives people who don't like having a dog shelter near them.
About 6 years ago Carmena bought a piece of land near the landfill of the city. She dreamed of building there a new shelter with veterinary services. However, there was no money to build the new shelter since every penny she has received has gone to maintain the current shelter and secure the welfare of its dogs.
During the years a lot of people and businesses have settled around the piece of land Carmena bought. These people began to protest against building the shelter for homeless dogs to the area. For over a year we have tried to find a suitable lot near the countryside so we could finally begin the building. Finding a suitable and reasonably priced lot has been very difficult and the authorities haven’t eased the situation one bit by lending a helping hand. They have also been very reluctant to give important information if Carmena and Patricia have wanted to learn about guidelines and laws for building a shelter.
We are thinking of linking some kind of a development project for the countryside to the new shelter project to receive support from EU if possible. The planning and implementation of this kind of a project demands a lot of time, professional approach and also financial investment of our own. Due to our limited resources advancing in the process has naturally been many times harder. Of course, PAFi tries to help Carmena and Patricia as much as possible in taking the project forward step by step and we will also need support from animal-friendly people to succeed.
Here is a rough sketch of the new shelter and clinic. The new shelter of an EU standard quality with veterinary services would also enable to start the neutering programmes of the stray dogs: Neuter and release-programme
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