From the MT:
“How Russia’s Homeless Animals
Survived the Quarantine”
When an older man became ill and
was quarantined, volunteers brought food and medicine, but no one could care
for his two dogs. So, for a month, a distant relative became one of Russia’s
growing ranks of animal volunteers. Volunteer organizations to aid animals have
existed in Russia for a long time, but this year they changed to meet the new
demands of the coronavirus lock-down. Yekaterina Posysaeva is a co-owner of a
veterinary clinic in Moscow. At the end of March, Yekaterina and other
volunteers got together to discuss how to help pet owners who were quarantined
or hospitalized. They considered using part of the clinic to house them, but
soon more than 350 people offered to foster dogs, cats, and even parrots and
turtles. Many owners didn’t need to arrange a foster home for their pets, but
they needed someone to buy food and walk their dogs. The process was completely
no-contact: the owner tied the dog’s leash to front door, the volunteer picked
up the dog for a walk, and then tied the dog back to the door handle and rang
the doorbell to let the owner know the pet was back home.
Happiness with Home Delivery: Another new project called Happiness With
Home Delivery was started in Moscow when Margarita Kondratyeva saw videos on
social networks of empty animal shelters in other countries. She thought
quarantined people in Moscow might also want to adopt a pet. So she gathered a
group of volunteers, contacted shelters and other organizations, and organized
an online marathon in April. Out of 150 dogs and cats, about 90 found new
homes, and only seven pets were returned. Nika Mogilevskaya, who has been in
animal protection for more than six years, said they placed another 50 animals
the next month, but “it’s hard to say whether it will be in demand,” once the quarantine
ends.
Nakormi:
Anna Feldman has long been concerned about Moscow’s strays. In 2014, she
founded Kotospas, a helpline for cats trapped in apartment building basements,
and then Cats in the City, a hotline people could call with questions about domestic
and stray cats. In early April 2020, she started #NAKORMI (#GiveThemFood) to
help feed strays. “The #NAKORMI project just appeared by itself,” Anna Feldman
told The Moscow Times. “People who could no longer feed homeless animals began
to write to us, and we realized that it was a problem. Before quarantine people
fed animals near their offices, in parks and industrial areas. During
quarantine most of these places were closed.” Volunteers in each district fed
strays near them, sometimes buying the food themselves. Even as some people go
back to work, help is still needed.
Social Veterinary Center: Galina Shlyakhova is the founder and head of
the Social Veterinary Center, a non-profit organization that launched a network
of veterinary clinics for animals in need. The organization has clinics in
Moscow, Gelendzhik, Krasnodar, and Lipetsk, all working together on several
projects, including one for crowdfunding started recently called “Anti-Crisis
Kindness.” Social veterinary centers help when there are emergencies and
difficult cases, usually injuries or dangerous diseases like oncology.
Sometimes animal shelters ask for help when they don’t have the necessary
equipment. “We help homeless animals and pets whose owners can’t pay a bill in
full. Sometimes we take care of animals free of charge, but in all the years
we've been working, no one has ever taken advantage of us,” Galina Shlyakhova
said. The organization runs a variety of projects, like rebuilding animal
shelters, which in Russia are just fenced-off areas, into comfortable and
inviting places where potential adopters can get to know the animals.
Veles: Small Russian towns may have fewer
organizations, but there is no dearth of volunteers. In Lipetsk, the Veles
group aids homeless animals. Marina Zvyagina is one of its members. “We are
just people who love animals and try to help them as best we can. We take them
to the vet, operate, sterilize, vaccinate homeless dogs and cats — and try to
find homes for them,” Zvyagina told The Moscow Times. So far they have helped
several thousand animals. During the quarantine, they continued the usual work
and began to walk dogs for pensioners who had to stay inside. Margarita Levakova is the head of Druzhok
animal shelter, in Staraya Russa, Novgorod region. The shelter, which houses
about 60 dogs, didn’t get an influx of pets people couldn’t care for, but it
did have a new problem during the period of quarantine. “We used to feed dogs
with leftover food from cafes and restaurants, but now we have to cook food for
them and use dry kibble. Volunteers, shops, residents and even a deputy from
the local city assembly have been helping us,” Levakova told The Moscow Times. In
Tula, animal volunteer Yana Zvereva doesn’t have to worry about a shelter. “We
don`t have one. Volunteers use their houses as foster homes. For us, almost
nothing changed during the pandemic, although we got fewer donations and have a
harder time adopting out our animals,” Zvereva said. Zvereva said that through
social media they've placed about 500 cats and dogs since they began work in
2011. Despite all the problems, Yana
continues to help animals because, as Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote: “You
become responsible forever, for what you have tamed.”
^ I have never seen so many homeless and abandoned
dogs and cats as when I was in Russia. With that said I did see a lot of
ordinary Russians go to great lengths to help these homeless animals. I personally
knew people who cooked (not bought, but cooked) dog food to give to them. I
also went to an Animal Shelter as part of my studies and saw how they managed
to care for so many homeless and abandoned dogs and cats with no Government (Local,
Oblast or Federal) help. ^
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