Stray dogs have a long history in Romania... Contanta Vintila-Ghitulescu from the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History in Bucharest says about stray dogs in the 19th century:

 

Contanta Vintila-Ghitulescu: “Stray dogs have been an issue for Romania forever, and in the 19th century there was talk for the first time of eliminating them. Until then, the problem was partly due to the fact that households did not have clear limits, such as fences, and so household dogs became everybody’s dogs. Bucharest and Iasi back then did not have clearly delimited households, like now, and that was true of Europe in general. The first document I found dates back to 1810, when the Russians, who occupied the Romanian Principalities after the 1806-1812 war with the Turks, saw the dogs all over the streets and hired people to round them up and kill them. Then they issued announcements to tell people to keep their own dogs chained in their courtyards, lest they be hunted down. After the Russians left in 1812, the measure fell. However, when cities started being reorganized by the French model in 1850, it came back. In the countryside, however, dogs are everywhere people are.”

 

For foreigners, the sight of stray dogs everywhere was shocking. Constanta Vintila-Ghitulescu says that packs of dogs ruled the cities after nightfall:

 

Contanta Vintila-Ghitulescu: ‘The consuls of Great Britain and France, present in Bucharest and Iasi until 1859, talk about being unable to walk the streets at night because of the dogs that were everywhere. There is an 1850 testimonial talking about the dogs on the Dambovita. Why there? Because it was the place where there were a lot of slaughterhouses and tanneries. These small businesses threw every piece of refuse in the river, and a lot of dogs ate what they threw away. Taking a walk there was bordering on suicide. In 1852, cities started issuing ordinances against stray dogs. The first shelter was built because the sight of killing them was gruesome. The first humanitarian arguments also emerged against the public killing of dogs.”

 

Stray dogs have actually killed people in recent history, and the problem was exacerbated by the issue of rabies and the aggressiveness it causes.

 

Contanta Vintila-Ghitulescu: “You can find in an old newspaper testimonies about rabid dogs, who attack anyone they meet, in cities or villages. You can see how serious the problem was from the many recipes against rabies. The problem was compounded by wolves. In the countryside, especially in the mountains, wolves were a constant presence, especially in winter, in addition to rabid dogs. Dogs are especially aggressive during epidemics, when food is scarce. The spectacle is atrocious, because in times when the plague hit, people were buried even before they were dead. People were so scared that they wanted to get rid of the sick people even before they died of the disease. As I said, the spectacle was horrible: dogs were pulling out corpses out of the ground and dragged them all over the streets.”

 

In all subsequent historical periods, Romania failed to deal with the problem of stray dogs. During communism, the population of stray dogs exploded as the authorities razed whole neighborhoods to erect blocks of flats, and this issue continues.

 

The recent stray animals problem in Romania began in the late 1980s. Before the communist regime of Dictator Nicolai Ceausescu, most Romanians worked on farms with their companion animals. But Ceausescu’s policies changed agricultural Romania into an urban society complete with overcrowding and food shortages.

When communism took hold, many rural families were forced to work in urban areas and weren't allowed to take their pets with them into the apartments where they lived. Thousands of dogs were left to fend for themselves in the countryside. Since Ceausescu's execution in 1989, the dog population has grown into the millions. 

 

But the problem is not just stray dogs. The problem is loose dogs. When the residents leave for work in the morning, they let their dogs out on the street. If they are caught by dog catchers, the owners pick them up from the shelter and pay a fine. These are virile dogs. They breed with strays. They create new puppies.

 

Even today 90 % (if not even more) of all Romanian dogs are not sterilized but allowed to roam freely and to mate as they wish. Approximately 5 million puppies are born in rural areas in Romania each years. Some are then killed by their owners, the others are simply abandoned on the streets or in the woods. 

 

Romanians throw puppies out on the street like smashed beer cans and today an estimated 1 to 1,5 million homeless dogs live in the entire country. 

 

In 2001, Traian Băsescu, the then-mayor of Bucharest launched a campaign that led to the extermination of about 144,000 stray dogs in the capital alone, spending almost 9,000,000 Euros (62 Euros per dog) during the period from 2001-2007. The dog catchers in Brasov spent about 2 million EURO in 8 years. Between 2008-2010, 20,000 dogs have been killed in Constanta spending 1,500,000 Euros (75 Euros per dog). 

Between 2001 and 2011 the Romanian animal control people have killed hundreds of thousands dogs by spending tens of millions of EUROs in public funds, while the number of stray dogs only grew larger because the authorities quickly came to realize that the mere existence of the strays is a very profitable business!

 

On 10th September the Lower House of the Romanian Parliament voted GEO 155/2001 to legitimise a 'catch and kill' policy for all homeless animals. The terminology used during the debate at the parliament was 'eradication'. Since this date media frenzy has been created because of the death of a young boy under what remains dubious circumstances. However the stray animals were blamed and as a result of the media frenzy and the vote, a state of abuse of animals exists now in Romania. Animals and their owners and protectors were immediately, and still are, at serious risk. It must be remembered that many millions of Romanians are animal owners or protectors of the animals. This law has polarized Romania's society and made it dangerously divisive. 
 

On 25th September, 2013 Constitutional Court judge Petre Lăzăroiu, suggested that "the mass killing of stray dogs in Romania could traumatize the population"... then the entire place ruled to cull all dogs... and that the eradication of Romania's homeless animals - although it had been ruled unconstitutional in January 2012 - was now "constitutional"! Go figure!

On 25th of September, the Romanian Constitutional Court had an opportunity to define whether Romania is a country worthy of being called civilized or whether it should be consigned to popular perception of a country unworthy of being considered anything other than barbaric, mismanaged, corrupt and dangerous. They chose the latter.

 

By ruling that 'euthanasia is constitutional' the Constitutional Court has contradicted its own previous decision from January 2012 (whereby it regulated that euthanasia may be applied only as a last method, only after the authorities have applied all solutions, correspondingly, and such solutions had failed to reduce the number of the strays on the streets or to eradicate the strays situation). 

By this decision the Constitutional Court has proved (together with the Parliament, Government and President) to lack integrity in favor of the abuse of power. On the same day, the President has promulgated the law! 

 

Without any discrimination ALL - including the gentle ones, the pregnant bitches, the puppies, the sterilized ones, the social ones, the community dogs who have never hurt anyone - will have to die. Many hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of "potential members of the (human) family" (as they are being considered in Western Europe, in the arguably more 'civilized' societies) now face the most horrible deaths - provided they survive 14 days spent in Romania's death camps. 

Although Romania's GEO 155/2001, Law 258/2013 and their other 'animal protection laws' use the term 'euthanasia', we would do humanity a great disservice by using the term 'euthanasia' associated with Romania. 'Eradication' is the term that they, themselves, used during the debate in the Parliament, and 'obscene mass slaughter' is perhaps a more appropriate descriptive.

The dogs may now be "put to stop" (meaning: killed) and the representatives of the NGOs are not even allowed to be present! 

The Sanitary Veterinary National Authority and the Veterinary College – institutions which in any other country other than Romania fight and defend the welfare and life of the animals (in Romania these authorities act against the interests of the animals) – are not strangers to this situation. 

The Veterinary College has introduced in the law, the fact that 'euthanasia' must be done in compliance with the 'Euthanasia Code' which was drafted and issued by the Veterinary College! Thus dogs may be “euthanized” now also using carbon dioxide, carbon oxide, potassium chloride, nitrogen, electric shocks, penetrating captive gun –  which are all cruel methods non-acceptable in the EU!

But Romania's 'eradication program' is deemed to failure just like ALL other 'catch & kill' or 'catch & incarcerate & starve to death' policies have proven unsuccessful in Romania. The WHO clearly states that killing stray animals does not stop the problem and only offers a temporary “solution” because it only addresses the effect but not the cause.

 

According to Princess Maja von Hohenzollern, Romania has killed an incredible 10 million stray dogs during the period from 2004 to 2009. That IS a 'genocide of dogs' that has never happened in Europe - and the entire world - before. Romania has killed almost as many dogs as half the population of Romania with the only "result" that the streets of Romania are again (still) littered with live and dead dogs. 

Overall it is estimated that Romania has spend between 25 and 40 million euros between 2001 and 2008 for the 'management' of the stray animals, while their numbers only grew larger!

 

Without the implementation of massive sterilization campaigns that MUST include ALL owned dogs, Romania's streets will never be free of dogs and all those who have already died, and all those many hundreds of thousands who will die over the next years, will have died in vain all the while Romania's corrupt politicians will yet again have found a way to syphon off millions of public funds.