11/08/14 Adopting is Cool: Doggies and Mutts
Animal Friends invite citizens to adopt animals
- First time simultaneous event in two cities: Zagreb and Osijek seek fosterers for Rok, Tercika and other dogs
The Shelter for Abandoned Animals of the City of Zagreb "Dumovec" is organizing an event named "Adopting is Cool," together with the Zagreb City Office for Agriculture and Forestry, in collaboration with Association Victories from Osijek , promoting the adoption of dogs that live in shelters. The event "Doggies and Mutts" will be held on Saturday, November 8, 2014 from 9 A.M. till 3 P.M. on Trg bana Josipa Jelacica in Zagreb and from 10 A.M. till 12 noon on Trg slobode in Osijek, where it will be supported personally by Osijek Mayor Ivan Vrkic.
The Shelter for Abandoned Animals of the City of Zagreb "Dumovec" and the Osjek asylum of the Association Victories in Nemetin are no-kill shelters that do not kill dogs after 60 days, and they came together in joint efforts to connect all the Croatian cities with the same goal - to help abandoned, neglected and abused animals to find a new home.
Roko from Zagreb and Tercika from Osijek will invite, in the name of other abandoned dogs in shelters, all the individuals and families that are able to take care of a new family member, to foster one. Animal Friends will hand out educational leaflets at the info stall and there will also be a petition that can be signed for a legal ban on killing animals in shelters.
Many towns still do not have shelters, and some shelters face many problems and a non-understanding of the environment in which they provide the responsible task of saving those who need help. The Animal Protection Act came into force in 2007, whilst the deadline for local self-governing units to fulfil their legal obligation expired in 2009. Sadly, most of them do not uphold the Act because they haven't built abandoned animal shelters, nor organized info centers nor even programs for spaying/neutering or the adoption of animals coupled with citizens' education.
Cities should ensure abandoned animals not only have so-called shelters that will remove them from the streets, far from the citizens' eyes, but also give them safety and through advertising, find them a new home. By the penalising of those responsible, plus the provision of repeated citizen education programs and programs of castration, adopting and microchipping, the problem of abandoning animals would greatly reduce and the health and civic, ethical picture of local communities and society as a whole would improve.
Wherever they are housed, dogs do not deserve to be killed but to be rehomed. Through the joint efforts of the shelters, i.e. cities, we are heading for a future without an animal market together with the legal sanctioning of animal abandonment. Those who abandon them will be punished, and adopting will be the only option.
They say in the Association Victories: "We fought many things. And we won. We wanted to win. That's why we called ourselves Victories because we never, ever even thought that we should stop or give up. Do you know why? Because it wasn't about our ego, about wanting to win. It was about lives. Real lives."
The winter is coming, many animals still do not have their own home and a family they could live with happily, and often they do not even have the opportunity to be inside a shelter or association. Animal Friends, together with the Shelter for Abandoned Animals of the City of Zagreb and Association Victories, calls on everybody to responsibly foster a dog or a cat instead of buying them.
Let's not buy alive beings- because you cannot buy love!