Together with refuse and potholes, stray dogs have become one of Sofia’s greatest unsolved challenges for the past 15 years. Looking for the competent view on the problem, PETAR KOSTADINOV reports.

 In 2004 Eleonora Hristozova became the first Bulgarian citizen to win a court action against Sofia municipality after a pack of stray dogs attacked and bit her . The court ruled that the municipality should pay 1000 leva to Hristozova in compensation. Hristozova was attacked in front the Cabinet office in the heart of Sofia.

All around the world, wherever there is a problem, people seek someone responsible for it, or at least someone who has the authority to deal with the problem. In the case of Sofia’s stray dogs, this person is the veterinarian Miroslav Naidenov.

This August, Naidenov was appointed head of Sofia’s municipal company, Ecoravnovesie. On top of cleaning up corruption in the company and struggling with the Government on new legislation that he feels will improve his work, he’s desperately searching for a way to tackle the sensitive issue of stray dogs in the city. It is a sensitive issue because, when it comes to stray dogs, there are two sides of the issue whose advocates are fiercely convinced they are right.

The first side originates from those who want a quick and final solution to the problem. They want to simply kill scavengers they see as dangerous and vicious. On the other side are numerous NGOs and citizens whose love for man’s best friend prompts them to seek more humane treatment of the four-legged animals.

Since 1998, the year it was founded, Ecoravnovesie has been responsible for the city’s uncontrolled stray dogs. Its task hasn’t been easy. As everyone can see, the dogs are still on the city’s streets. Some would say they represent a crisis — both as a public health problem and as an example of the failure of government.

It would not be unsound to claim that every second Sofia resident, including this reporter, has had at least one troublesome experience at night, often in the form of finding oneself navigating between separate angry dog packs.

Eight years is a long period for a company not to do what it was set up to do. That is why the public welcomed Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov’s decision to replace Stiliyan Kirchev with Miroslav Naidenov as head of Ecoravnovesie. Many felt that it was a good sign that that Naidenov is a vet, as opposed to an engineer, like Kirchev.

On October 31, The Sofia Echo asked Naidenov about his plans and leadership of Ecoravnovesie for the past two months.

“What I am suggesting is nothing new and it has been used very successfully in Plovdiv and Varna,” Naidenov said.

For the relief of all those concerned about the dogs’ well-being, Naidenov said he is against any kind of inhuman treatment of the animals. The first order he issued was to stop killing dogs in Sofia.

“I am myself a vet who loves animals,” he said. “Killing dogs is the very last solution and it will be applied only for the dogs who are beyond healing, too aggressive or old to survive on the streets”.

All the other dogs captured by Ecoravnovesie teams since August have been castrated, vaccinated, marked and registered. After the dogs are treated, they are sent to their original place of capture.

“I am not inventing anything new,” he repeated. “This is the way of the World Health Organisation and European Union. Actually I am personally puzzled why my predecessor chose another approach, which was simply euthanasia.”

A report commissioned by Naidenov and mayor Borissov found a complete lack of accountancy in Ecoravnovesie. They had been manipulating the numbers of dogscaptured as a way to divert funds, Naidenov said.

“The needle alone used to put a dog to sleep is worth nine euro and we believe that this has been a profitable scheme for the previous management of Ecoravnovesie to earn money,” Naidenov said.

Other findings of the report revealed that the city’s municipal council allocated 300 000 leva for the construction of the new dispensary based in Seslavtsi village. But later Ecoravnovesie signed a contract with a private company for 600 000 leva.

“We are now waiting for another check to be completed in Sofia Invest Company, which was supposed to exercise control over this spending,” Naidenov said.

All materials related to the case will be sent to the Prosecutor General’s Office for further legal action, he said.

Following the report, Naidenov shook up the company. He appointed a PR person, for example, and a new manager in Seslavtsi's dispensary. “It is the best choice, Doctor Bozhidar Assenov,” he said. “It was very difficult to persuade him but he is a proven name as a veterinarian and chairperson of the association of vets about small animals.”

He reformed how the company picked dogs off the street.

“What I did as well was to abolish the practice of paying Ecoravnovesie teams for every dog which they had captured. The rate was 3.30 leva a dog. I have heard reports that there was a trade in the Roma neighborhoods in stray dogs. The team just goes there and buys the dogs for 50 stotinki each. You can do the math. Now the teams have fixed salaries.”

The four Ecoravnovesie teams consist of a driver, two hunters and a volunteer who supervises their work. “With this [system], all illegal activity was terminated," Naidenov proudly said.

Counting the dogs
“At present no one can say exactly how many stray dogs live in Sofia,” Naidenov said.

Sofia’s Ecology Committee claims that at the beginning of 2006, there were close to 17 000 dogs on the city’s street. Every spring there is a 30 per cent increase in dogs population. There is another 30 per cent increase after the autumn population as well.

“So if no one controls the dogs’ population, as was the case up until now, they would become 27 000 by the end of the year,” Naidenov said. “If we continue to follow the same routine of capturing and killing the dogs, by the end of the year we can decrease the number of the stray dogs by 7000. This is all of course if we accept that at present there are 17 000 stray dogs. I personally believe that there are more.”

Naidenov wants to achieve is to know exactly how many dogs there are on Sofia’s streets. “After we mark them this will be achieved,” he said.

Naidenov also wants to have every stray dog vaccinated. That way, in the event of an attack, people will be know they haven’t been exposed to contagious diseases because the dogs have been vaccinated.

Usually attacks occur during breeding periods when female dogs are followed by packs or when females want to protect their litters. “Such incidents are inevitable in the future,” he said.

At present, Ecoravnovesie has only one facility, the isolator in Seslavtsi village. The dispensary has been in operation since this April. However, it is far away from the city and it was built for different purposes than Naidenov’s. “It was built so that the straydogs to be put to sleep,” he said. “It was made to kill” .

The financial resources of Ecoravnovesie today allow Naidenov to equip no more than two surgery rooms in the dispensary. “Only up to 20 dogs can be examined, vaccinated, castrated and marked in one surgery room a day, which is not enough for us to follow our programme,” he said.

When Naidenov was appointed, he banned killings in Seslavtsi and started following his agenda. Killing just doesn’t work, Naidenov said, citing the example of Bucharest.
A few years ago, Bucharest had a similar problems with stray dogs. The government organised groups of shooters and eventually killed most of the stray dogs. Within two years, the stray dogs ballooned to 100 000. The reason is simple for Naidenov. If you kill a dog, a new one comes to take his territory, he said.

“We are trying to castrate, vaccinate and mark the dogs,” he said. “But the budget has been projected on the principle of catch and kill. So we are short of funds.”

In fact, there was no money left in the company when Naidenov took over. But the new director has a solution for this problem. The solution lies between several Sofia suburbs and the city centre.

On May 2 a new Veterinary Act went into force. According to this act, five veterinary dispensaries in Sofia owned by the state were closed, since the state was no longer obliged to provide veterinary services.

“We simply need and want these five dispensaries in Gorna Bania, Dragalevtsi, Bankia, Vrabnitsa and Vrazhdebna neighbourhoods,” Naidenov said.

The five veterinary hospitals are fully equipped and will fit perfectly in Naidenov's plan. “We do not even want them permanently,” he said. “We need the dispensaries just for a year so that we can castrate, vaccinate, mark and register all stray dogs in Sofia. After that we will be able to control their population only with the Seslavtsi dispensary.”

At first this idea was taken well by the institutions responsible for the dispensaries, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and its National Veterinary Service (NVS). “The idea actually was born during talks held between Sofia deputy mayor Tsvetan Tsvetanov and Dimitar Peichev, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Forestry,” Naidenov said.

But following this meeting, Naidenov sent a letter on September 15 to Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Nihat Kabil and Sofia’s Regional Governor asking to use the five dispensaries. Surprisingly, Naidenov did not receive an answer. He sent another letter with the same request on October 18. “We are currently waiting for them to reply,” he said.

For many, this development might seem strange, since Peichev had come up with the idea of using the former dispensaries himself. Naidenov, however, has his own explanation.

“When I talked to Peichev about why no on answers our letters, he told me the obstruction to this idea had come from Zheko Baichev, head of NVS,” he said. “My personal opinion is that some people want to start renting these five bases instead of giving them to us. What I suspect is that the dispensaries are planned to be used for private veterinary practises with the idea to be privatised sometimes later.”

The medical equipment and the land which comes with the dispensaries in fast-growing Sofia are, after all, a tempting bite indeed.

“At least they could have said they had some plans for these five bases, but we have not heard any reply from the ministry at all,” he said. “That is why I think these bases will be put up for sale and this is the reason they do not want us to have them,” Naidenov said.

The Sofia Echo contacted the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry for their position on the issue. The ministry did not reply.

“What we can do now is to inform the media and society about this and eventually call the European Commission,” said Naidenov.

In theory, no law in Bulgaria defines how stray dogs should be treated. The May 2 Veterinary Act does not specify anything. The bill says that within three months from May 2 the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry must produce come up rules about the humane treatment of animals.

“So far there has not been any development on that,” Naidenov said.

Indeed, a working group was formed with the participation of many specialists — from the ministry, from Ecoravnovesie and NGOs. The draft version was coordinated with EU standards. However, one day before sending a draft bill to Parliament, after it was approved by every member of the working group, a text in the draft bill was replaced.

Baichev, again, was the source of the change, Naidenov said. The new text said that stray dogs who spend more than seven days in captivity will be killed. At present dogs are killed on the fourteenth day. "This text was changed without the knowledge of the working group and we all protested it," Naidenov said.

The protest managed to convince Parliament to drop the draft bill, but the fact is that there is still no law specifying Ecoravnovesie’s duties.

This is why we can not get any funding,” said Naidenov. “There are donors who want to invest in our programme, but they do not know what might happen with their money if I am suddenly replaced. And they are right. Our programme simply does not fit in with the current legislation and if we want to follow the law we have to kill the dogs.”

By the end of July 2006, when Naidenov took over the company, more than 3800 stray dogs were captured. Of these, more than 3100 were put down. Almost 130 dogs died while in the isolator in Seslavtsi village outside Sofia. Ecoravnovesie has captured close to 75 000 dogs between December 1998 and August 2006. Around 70 000 have been euthanised. The company has spent more than five million leva in that time.

Source: An October 18 report on Ecoravnovesie's activity requested by Naidenov and Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov