Thursday 27 May 2010

TNR: Trap Neuter Return - A Template for Change launched in Romania

Although primarily covering the UK and Ireland, Dogs Trust does do some international work. One of our projects was a programme to humanely reduce street dog populations in Oradea, Romania working with Battersea Dogs & Cats Home and the local Mayor.

After our experiences in that region, the TNR template was created; it's a comprehensive document that guides anyone, anywhere, through setting up a TNR scheme. You can read all about TNR and download the template from www.tnrdogs.com.

Recently, the template was translated into Romanian (also available for download at the link above) and launched back in the country that started it all. Below is a video shot at a Romanian rescue during the launch where you can hear from one of our press officers, Krystyna McGrath, and Carolyn Menteith, the author and dog trainer who created the document for us.


1 comment:

Arjun L Sen said...

This is a fantastic and really helpful document. I live in Spain where I work in a private school but I am helping Serbian and European animal workers desperately trying to save stray dogs from the Pozega Nas Dom death camp in Serbia where, contrary to Serbian law, dogs are being collected from seven cities in Serbia and taken to Nas Dom where they are starved and denied water, beaten to death, mutilated in botched "sterilisations", euthanised with T61 injection without preparation, and other such horrors.

Humanimal is a registered charity in Belgrade, Serbia and gets no goverment support, working on a fragile budget from donations of animal workers and well-wishers. The Facebook publicity page is Help Pozega Dogs!

When the charity workers plead with Nas Dom to let them look after the dogs they laugh because the authorities PAY Nas Dom to capture and kill the dogs. to release a dog they charge plenty of money per dog. Death and torture of sentient beings is a business to these people. UI'm sure you are familiar with all this from Romania and other places but my point is that apart from trying to get out as many dogs from being murdered as we can afford to do on a day by day basis we are struggling to convince the authorities that a TNR programme saves them money if they do it properly.

If you can help, the charity that I support in Serbia, called Humanimal, run by a young woman called Dusica Radulovic and based in Belgrade, please help us with your advice. We need all the help, support and advice we can get. Right now we need some facts and figures to show that TNR saves money in the long run over capture-maintain-kill. Do you have any? I can send them to Dunica and she can translate it into Serbo-Croat for the authorities there. Also, may we have permission to use or summarise these recommendations by translating it or parts of it into Serbo-Croat only for the purpose of communicating information to the local authorities there, not for any commercial purpose? We are desperate to build a case to persuade them to shut down the Pozega Nas Dom death camp and adopt a TNR strategy for Serbia...if we can't appeal to their humanity we want to convincingly appeal to their pockets...thanks for your patience and concern in advance,

Yours sincerely

Arjun L. Sen
Mijas Costa, Spain