KP
December 14, 2004, 4:49pm
41
There’s absolutely no shortage of recent published accounts of feral dogs in Moscow [475 hits] I didn’t check for scientific studies, but it seems to be an issue. I didn’t find a similar numberof articles regarding other cities of similar size. Here are the first 3 results.
From this article on Urban animal control internationally in 2002.
But there seemed to be good news from Moscow, where recently appointed animal control chief Tatiana N. Pavlova in mid-2001 replaced catch-and-kill with sterilization and vaccination.
“Several years ago, biologists surveyed Moscow and determined that its garbage bins and Metro stations support a stable population of about 25,000 homeless dogs,” Douglas Birch of the Baltimore Sun Journal wrote in March 2002. “These strays occupy an ecological niche in Russia’s capital. Rounding up and killing them never made much difference. Exterminate a dog, the biologists say, and another will take its place. But replace fertile females with sterile females, and the population will gradually decline.”
Pavlova told Birch that she continues to have trouble with private animal control subcontractors who bill the city for sterilizations not performed, and kill the dogs they catch instead.
But Birch indicated that Pavlova, a longtime prominent animal advocate, seems to have swung public opinion firmly to her side.
From eXile , a Moscow newspaper, July 2003:
Then we came across a sight which made us really happy in a way I’m not able to explain very well: a pack of four stray dogs sprawled in lordly abandon under a birch tree. Three of the strays were lying around the birch, with the fourth, the leader, sprawled on his own a couple of meters away. They heard us, but didn’t so much as twitch an ear. They owned that patch of ground and they knew it. They might get run over or shot tomorrow, but for now, they ruled the place, even asleep.
I’ve seen other packs of feral dogs sleeping the same way around Moscow. []i]Feral dogs seem to go nocturnal; they sleep days and hunt nights. * They’re aggressive by night too–they’ll jump you. You can’t get soppy about them. But it does you good to see them lolling there, sleeping in a pack, like they’re not afraid of anything. It all but washed the Republican booth out of my head.
A more frightening view from a Russian animal protection group"Muscovites Hunted by Packs of Dogs" by Alexander Karpov (lots of cases and anecdotes, too long to quote here)
As always, you have to weigh the source, but I think there’s plenty of material, easily available, to form an informed opinion on the actual situation. Sadly I don’t have the time or inclination to sort through it all.
CarnalK
December 15, 2004, 3:07am
42
What KP said. Also my first post (#32 ) also had a Pravda link describing packs attacking people in Moscow. I quoted it too.
Sorry, missed your post somehow.
Wow, this is really weird. I’ve been here for six weeks now, travelling all around the city at all times of day and night, and this is the first I’ve ever seen or heard of this.