As I promised in a blog that I wrote in Turkey, I have been keeping my eyes open to the world of animal control in Greece. In Turkey, as you may remember from my blog post, there are stray animals everywhere, fending for themselves on the street. The Turkish government pays money every year to capture the stray animals and vaccinate them, indicating a vaccination by putting a white tag in the dog or cat’s ear. This way of dealing with animal control is different than that of America, where the American government spends billions of dollars every year capturing stray animals, vaccinating them, housing and feeding them in animal shelters, and then euthanizing 75% of them.
In Greece, however, I cannot see any evidence of animal control of any sort. Mangy dogs and cats run around the streets, wandering in and out of outdoor cafés to beg for food. Many of them are sick; plagued with fleas or illnesses that make them lose their hair and have eye-sight problems. I have seen kittens go dumpster-diving with their mothers or dogs gathering in packs through the streets. Although I have only seen one dead animal on the streets, I’m sure that with so many stray animals running about, there are bound to be accidents that result in death for many of them.
All of the problems in Turkey, in America, and everywhere are rooted in the fact that people do not spay or neuter their animals. Therefore, stray animals running around the streets are able to impregnate other animals and the cycle goes on and on. This is the main anecdote for the problems that can be seen in America, and I think that animal control issues in Turkey have been sufficiently addressed and that stronger encouragement for Turkish people to spay or neuter their animals would make the problems disappear. However, Greece’s apparent disregard for addressing animal control at all is a problem that needs more work than simply developing stronger spay/neuter laws.
The Greek culture overall is very intolerant of the responsibilities that one has to one’s pet. I was talking to Captain George’s wife, Lise, and she was telling us how many of her Greek friends think her family is disgusting because they own a horse and two dogs, which they allow to live inside their home. I too have seen this at the farm. Many of the riders and parents of the riders wear beautiful summer clothes to the farm instead of crappy jeans and a t-shirt. The riders do not help the volunteers tack up the horses prior to the ride or clean the horses after the ride, mostly due to the fact that it is a dirty, sweaty, and hairy job.
Many Greeks think that animals are too dirty to live inside the home, which is a mentality that often leads to neglect and even abuse. As I have heard in the stories of many of the animals that live on the Villa, abusive backgrounds are all-too-often the case. Also, this attitude prevents people from benevolently caring for an animal that they find on the street. My mom and I found a dog on the street when I was in high school and kept her as a pet, but I doubt that a Greek family would do the same because they would fear the dirt and diseases that the animal might carry.
In terms of spaying and neutering, the Greek culture also tends to value non-gelded animals more than ones that have been castrated. In fact, many Greeks do not consider gelded animals to be of the male gender—it’s like a lower degree of male-ness. Just the other day, a Greek woman was riding a black gelding named Roben. At the end of her ride she patted him on the neck and said, “Good boy! I mean, gelding,” like they were two different things. So, there are many more male animals in Greece that have not been neutered due to this ideal, and this is yet another obstacle in the way of a more humane way to deal with animal control in Greece.
The Silva Project tries to alleviate the problem of animal control in Greece with its dog-rescue shelter. The Silva Project does not offer dogs that are aggressive or mean, and any dog that proves to be too aggressive is quietly euthanized. They have had trouble getting a lot of the dogs to be adopted because, like I said before, many Greek families do not want multiple pets, if any at all. By offering the animals for adoption worldwide, there have been a few more successes. However, all of the dogs that are currently at the shelter have been there for months on end and will be euthanized this fall if they are not adopted. It is sad to think about so many nice animals being killed, but, in a way, it is a more humane fate for them than if they had been left on the street to starve or be run over by a car.
I can see so much potential for a stronger spay/neuter campaign in Greece, and while I am not sure if animal shelters would alleviate the problems of animal control, I would argue that Turkey’s method of annually vaccinating the animals would be a baby-step in the right direction. Since I am nearing the end of my fifth week here, I know that I cannot realistically start a movement like this in my remaining three weeks, but I do plan on suggesting it to other BN’s or Trinities who might have interest in improving animal control issues worldwide.
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