Dog problems addressed

 

The number of stray dogs around campus decreased last week after the Residence Life and Housing office asked the Blagoevgrad municipality to relocate them off campus.

The number of stray dogs around campus is still considerable, Todor Kehayov, the director of Residence Life and Housing, said. "We have tried to find a solution to [the problem], and we also talked to the municipality. We managed to get away the big dogs, but since there is [no] official shelter for the dogs the problem remains," he added.

Kehayov said he reports to the municipality on the presence of dogs on campus. After such a report is made, municipality contractors are assigned to pick up the dogs and take them to licensed veterinarians in town who castrate them. After the surgery, the dogs are brought back to the place they were taken from. Kehayov said he asked the municipality to take the bigger dogs on campus somewhere else.

Exchange student Veronika Susienkova and SG Senator Teodora Toneva looked into ways of addressing issues related to the stray dogs located on campus.

Toneva said students should first be informed on the issue and advised on how to behave around the stray dogs. She plans to make posters and flyers containing information on how not to provoke dogs and avoid unpleasant incidents. "I will most probably have all the informational posters done by [November 28]. [...] We can put them [on] the boards of the RAs, or at the front desks of both Skaptos," Toneva said.

Susienkova said there are many homeless dogs in Blagoevgrad. She said she wants to help the Bulgarian community with neutering stray dogs, which in time will diminish their numbers. I'm not saying that you should "love them, because it is my choice to love them, and I respect everyone's opinion," she added.

"I know that I am a dreamer about this but if [every] student of AUBG gave only 20 or 50 stutinki which is one coffee, it can be [a] big amount of money because castration is free, but the public institutions they are really slow and I hope that we can collect money and we can create something like week of castration," Susienkova said.

Ilka Yankovicheva, president of an animal protection NGO called Nadezhda za chetirinogite (Hope for the four-legged), monitors the condition of strays in Blagoevgrad. The Blagoevgrad municipality asked the organization to collaborate with them in order to find a solution for the problem of stray dogs, Yankovisheva said. The proposal can then be presented to the European Union for funds, she added.

Nadezhda za chetirinogite is negotiating with an Austrian organization to find families in Austria that will adopt Blagoevgrad strays, Yankovicheva said. The organization can help people adopt the puppies in Skaptopara, she added.