In the conditions of metropolitan life, everyone has a difficult time.
People take in pets, but then, due to their own busyness, are unable or unwilling to fulfill their caring responsibilities. It may soon happen that the pet ends up abandoned. It's not easy for him to survive. Dogs can form packs. And then a real threat arises for nearby residents. How to protect your loved ones from an angry pack? Sometimes you have to make an inhumane choice and report to the dog hunter service.
Blanket
On the night of May 6–7, two dogs ran away in a cottage community in the suburbs of Krasnoyarsk.
One of them, a young husky, was shot. It was during the day, and dozens of people heard the shots. One of them picked up a dog twitching and whining in pain, took it to the doctors, and informed the owners. They shot with pellets, and veterinarians removed 26 pellets from the dog’s body. No bones were hit, and the animal was saved. The owners filed a statement with the police. Stray dogs have much less chance of survival. According to community activists, up to five dogs are killed in Krasnoyarsk every day - strays, with tags, in collars. This happened before, but from January 1, 2022, killing animals is considered a crime and falls under Article 245 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The maximum penalty is up to three years in prison.
“Corpses of dogs appear regularly in the city today,” says human rights activist Olga Suvorova, “and the police are not yet particularly eager to respond to signals. It gets to the point of absurdity: on March 28, we called the police to [inspect] the dog’s corpse and invited journalists. The journalists arrived first, then the police arrived and fined [us] for violating self-isolation. This is the work so far. Several corpses were found in the central part of the city already poisoned. We managed to bring it to the examination. She testified that the dogs died from tubazide. Unfortunately, the case is not being investigated further. The police shrugged it off: “Well, the dog ate Tubazid, who’s going to stop it?”
Olga SuvorovaPhoto: from personal archive
Tubazid is an anti-tuberculosis drug that is given strictly as prescribed. After taking this medicine, says Suvorova, the dog’s lungs collapse, blood flows down the throat - and the animal dies. But public activists still manage to call the police and demand that the murder be registered. “All that remains is to ensure that criminal cases begin to be initiated based on confirmed examinations,” Olga shrugs.
“The law protecting stray dogs from cruelty has put us in a vice,” says city mayor Sergei Eremin. “In my opinion, he pulled the blanket in the opposite direction, when dogs are protected from people, but people are not protected from dogs. Even chipped and sterilized dogs now behave aggressively and attack people. There is an urgent need to review individual articles of the law.” In the spring, Krasnoyarsk deputies sent amendments to the law and a request to the State Duma to delay the application of its provisions. They insist on the need to shoot dangerous animals.
“But private individuals also kill,” says Olga Suvorova. — Those who have read the news about dogs killing people and are simply afraid. After all, almost all the media in Krasnoyarsk said that dogs were to blame for the deaths of five people. What else do you need to intimidate? Essentially, the city has declared a war against dogs.”
What will happen to the caught dog?
The caught dog will be taken to a foster care center. Here the animal will be examined by a veterinarian. If the dog is aggressive or suffers from diseases dangerous to humans, it will be euthanized. A healthy animal will be sterilized or castrated, left in foster care for 10 days, after which it will be vaccinated against rabies, microchipped and (if there are those willing) given into good hands or released back.
Specialists track and catch the leader, after which the pack breaks up
Please keep in mind that there is no exact deadline for catching stray dogs. They don’t sit still waiting for a team of specialists, and sometimes you have to run around after them. It happens that in case of failure, the team decides to come to the site the next day, so we advise you to be patient.
Thousands of complaints
According to the prosecutor's office, in 2022, almost 7 thousand complaints about stray dogs were received from city residents. One incident literally shook the city. A nine-year-old boy was attacked by a pack of dogs near his home. Eight dogs tore and chewed the child, not even allowing him to get up. All this happened in front of his brother; the boy miraculously survived. Today Nikita Potapenko can smile and even walk with the neighbor’s dog. He doesn’t remember well the day when trouble happened to him, although he was conscious the whole time he was being chewed up by a pack of stray dogs. Nikita was literally saved from death by Natalya Lugovkina, who worked in a warehouse nearby.
“I was at work when a boy ran up to me shouting: “Auntie, dogs attacked my brother,” recalls Natalya. “I didn’t believe it, but I ran out into the street after him.” I hear children screaming and dogs barking on the mountain. I rushed, the boy behind me, I remember that I grabbed cobblestones along the way. It flashed through my head: “There are car services and a beer stall nearby.” But there was no time to ask for help. At the top of the hill there is a narrow trench lined with bricks. In it, covering his face with his hands, lay a small, thin boy. And he, like a rag doll, was torn and chewed by dogs, about five of them, and three more stood and barked nearby. The child tried to get out, but it was no use, the dogs grinned and did not let him get up. I started screaming as much as I could, straight up yelling at them and throwing stones, but the stones quickly ran out. Then she began to grab and throw everything that came to hand. They stopped for a bit. Then I grabbed the child by the scruff of the neck, pulled him out of the trench and ran with him to the nearest pavilion. I’m rushing, and I hear that the dogs are catching up with us. We barely made it. In the pavilion I handed him over to the girls, caught my breath, we laid him on a bench and called an ambulance. Nikita was conscious, I sat and talked, talked to him, thought: if only he didn’t pass out. We waited for a long time, the ambulance didn’t want to go at first, it said: “Call the police.” But then she came anyway.”
Stray dogsPhoto: Lev Fedoseev/TASS
Now Nikita is recovering, the boy has undergone several operations, and a skin transplant on his head is still pending. Until November last year, he adored all dogs indiscriminately. Now the boy cannot walk past homeless dogs.
If you see a stray dog, go around
But what should residents of yards where dogs have not yet been caught? There are some simple safety rules to avoid being attacked.
If you see a pack of dogs, it is better to go around it. When passing close to animals, you should not talk or gesture loudly.
If it is clear that the dogs are already moving in your direction, you should not run away or brush them off. It is advisable to move on calmly, without expressing emotions - fear or anger. It is best to put your hands in your pockets and not make sudden movements - the dog will not see hostility and may not attack.
If the dog does bite, you should immediately go to the nearest emergency room . Bites from stray animals are very dangerous; any medical institution must provide assistance even in the absence of documents - a passport and medical insurance. Dog bites can lead to rabies, tetanus and a number of infectious diseases.
The culprits were caught
The first body was found on January 15 in the Leninsky district of the city. The body of a 58-year-old watchman lay on the territory of the production base. On February 13, the bitten body of a woman was found on Kutuzov Street in the neighboring Kirovsky district, and on February 20, not far from this place, the body of a man was found with the same injuries. On February 22, the body of another woman with eaten limbs was found in the courtyard of a house on Michurina Street. According to eyewitnesses, a pack of dogs was running nearby. The 37-year-old man was found on February 25 in the garage complex. On March 18, investigators from the Investigative Committee in the region announced the results of an examination of four bodies: according to preliminary data, the people were mauled to death by dogs. All four were confirmed to have died from dog bites. The examination of another body continues.
Within a radius of two kilometers from the places where the bodies were found, 17 dogs were caught and placed in a shelter. The culprit was also identified: a case of negligence was opened against the head of the city department of roads, infrastructure and improvement of the Krasnoyarsk administration, Evgeniy Petryuk. The official was placed in a temporary detention center and later sent under house arrest for two months. The city mayor's office did not agree with the detention of the employee. “We believe that he did not commit any offenses in his activities. We hope that Evgeny Petryuk will be released and will not be convicted,” stated the Krasnoyarsk administration.
Immediately 17 deputies of the Krasnoyarsk City Council vouched for Petryuk in court. However, on April 14, Petryuk was dismissed from the Krasnoyarsk administration “at his own request.” A week later, the court rejected the investigation’s request to extend the period of house arrest, and the official was released on bail of 250 thousand rubles. The criminal case has not been closed, but so far only dogs remain guilty - and not just any specific ones.
Large shelters
In addition to volunteer “amateur” organizations in the city, there are (or are preparing to open) large shelters that also find or catch strays. For example, the same Homeless Dog.”
“Homeless Dog is a charitable public organization and, first of all, we help find homes for dogs and cats from temporary and private shelters,” says the main page of the site.
Already this fall on the street. Bashilovskaya (KrAZ district) will open a large shelter for homeless animals “PovoDog”.
"Human irresponsibility"
It was Petryuk who oversaw the work of two organizations that, under a contract with the mayor’s office, were engaged in catching stray dogs. There are no municipal animal shelters in Krasnoyarsk, a million-strong city, and there never have been, and the authorities involve private owners in the work. The largest private shelter for dogs in the city is “Homeless Dog”. This is where the dogs live, which were caught in the place where the bodies were found.
The old concrete building is located not far from the city highway, next to it is a fence behind which dogs of different stripes walk. The head of the shelter, Svetlana Zagumennikova, practically lives there. Leaves only for business trips.
“I have a difficult job,” she explains as we climb the stairs to her office. “But all this needs to be supported somehow.”
“Homeless Dog” works according to the OSVV program: catching - sterilization - vaccination - return. The purpose of this method, Zagumennikova emphasizes, is to protect people.
“By catching dogs, we not only sterilize them, but also vaccinate them against rabies: in this way they contain the epidemic threshold for rabies in the city. They killed a vaccinated dog - a wild one came into its territory, and no one knows what infections it is carrying. If there were no vaccinated dogs in the city, foxes, wolves, and gophers would regularly come out to us.”
The Krasnoyarsk Agrarian University calculated that the ecological background of Krasnoyarsk is 3 thousand dogs. This is a biological niche that must be filled in order to deter wild animals from entering the city and destroy rats that live in garbage dumps. The rat is a natural food enemy for dogs and eats the same food that they eat. The rat carries about 50 diseases, 36 of which are transmitted to humans, including rabies. Now, says the director of Homeless Dog, 6 thousand dogs roam freely on the streets of the city, including those that have been abandoned and those that are on their own. Zagumennikova calls both “human irresponsibility.”
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♥️Shy, cute Kira♥️⠀ ⠀ A kind, small girl with a soft fur coat and a shy look that’s hard to resist
