We were alerted to the matter by a Reader. In October last year, a small mongrel wandered onto Rajska Street. The dog was friendly towards people, but it also had bad habits. It chased cars and ran under them, forcing drivers to make dangerous manoeuvres. When let into a yard where poultry was kept, it lunged at the chickens. One of the neighbours called the police. According to the woman, instead of helping her and taking the dog away, the officers advised her to have the mongrel microchipped and adopt it.
“I don’t want to take him in,” the woman says. “First, there would be expenses; second, I have chickens, and as soon as the dog is let into the yard, it attacks them.” The woman called the police about the dog twice, and each time without result. Piotr Błaszkiewicz from the police headquarters in Bolesławiec says that catching dogs is not among the police’s duties and that only the Municipal Police deal with it. Kamila Chalewicz takes a different view. “The police do not have the proper equipment to catch dogs,” says the deputy commander of the Municipal Police. “But it is not true that police officers do not deal with stray dogs at all.”
However, neither the police nor municipal officers are dogcatchers. “We are obliged to care for people’s safety,” says Chalewicz. “That is why we first deal with aggressive, large animals that could bite someone. But when necessary, we also come out for smaller, non-aggressive dogs. Recently, we received a report from the area around Rajska. From Zabobrze Street, we took away a dog that had also killed the residents’ chickens. It is now in a temporary holding facility on Kościuszki Street. I suggest that the woman from Rajska call us, not the police, and report the need to catch a stray dog.”
Bolesławiec still has neither a shelter nor a plan for dealing with the capture and subsequent care of stray animals. The Bolesławiec Municipal Commune has considered building a shelter in Bolesławiec several times, but, as the city’s spokesperson Agnieszka Gergont informed our journalist (article from July 2010: Bolesławiec Residents Want an Animal Shelter in Their City), there is no suitable site within the city that would meet the requirements set out in the regulation of the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development. Residents still have to deal with the problem of stray dogs themselves.
(information: Grażyna Hanaf)