It turns out that getting rid of an unwanted dog is much easier than helping it. A man found a well-groomed Scottish Setter in a forest near Dobra and wanted to take it to a shelter. He did not know what the procedures were, so he went to the municipal office on Teatralna Street (under the Animal Protection Act, every municipality is responsible for providing care for homeless animals and capturing them).
At the reception desk, he was directed to the Environmental Protection Department, which deals with stray animals. The man explained that he wanted the officials to take care of the dog and find it some shelter. “The female official working in that room told me to go back to the forest and preferably leave the dog I had found there,” the man said, outraged by the official’s attitude. “My blood pressure rose, and I did not even remember her name.”
Turned away and treated badly, the man went with the dog to the municipal police. But there it turned out that a homeless dog found in the countryside did not belong to the city and could not be taken to the municipal holding facility on Kościuszki. “An official must approve keeping the dog,” explained the duty municipal police officer, who tried to help the man and called officials from the Rural Municipality to deal with the problem. “Unfortunately, no one called me back, although they promised that someone would handle the matter,” the officer added.
The man took the dog home because he could not imagine abandoning an animal that had not left his side. The matter was happily resolved the following day. It turned out that the setter had merely become lost. Its owner had left it with a carer, from whom the dog escaped. The problem, however, remained and concerns stray dogs from rural municipalities in general. What should be done in the future with a stray dog found outside the city, and can officials advise citizens to abandon homeless animals where they found them?
We called the office on Teatralna. The phone was answered by official Irena Greszczyszyn, an inspector responsible for agriculture and business activity. She was not willing to explain much, but informed us that the case of the found setter had been resolved positively because the dog’s owner had been located. Asked why the man who found the dog had been treated that way the previous day, she replied evasively: “How are we supposed to know that the dog was really found in Dobra, rather than in Bolesławiec, Tomaszów or somewhere else?”
She gave an even more enigmatic answer when asked what should be done in the future with a stray dog found within the rural municipality of Bolesławiec. “I am not going to spend all day explaining our procedures here,” said Irena Greszczyszyn. “That is our matter; the law obliges us to deal with it. I will provide no further information.”
During the rather impolite conversation, the official suggested that the municipality faced a serious problem: the lack of a shelter. Judging from her reluctance to discuss the matter, one might conclude that the municipality has no legal tools or established procedures to deal competently with the problem of homeless animals in the villages belonging to the municipality.
The unfavorable manner in which the official discussed the matter may raise suspicions that shifting the problem of stray dogs and cats onto citizens is the only tool—or perhaps even an unwritten right—that officials in the municipality use.
(report: Grażyna Hanaf)