Grigore Cartianu: “We have sent them to the streets and the City Hall left them to breed. The stray dogs are trying to survive in the urban jungle. We must protect ourselves from them but we have no right to slaughter them!”

EVZ has started a public campaign named “What do we do about the stray dogs?” after revealing the case of the teacher who was ripped in downtown Bucharest. The journalistic initiative is based on the danger that stray dogs pose.

The figures are frightening: 10.000 citizens, of which 2.000 children are bit every year. An average of 22 adults and 6 children arrive at the hospital every day. And that is just in Bucharest. We get a grim picture, if we consider the multitude of cases from the rest of the country.

We live with a danger that has reached epidemic proportions but we close our eyes and move on. Eventually, we pray that it wouldn’t happen to us. To us or to those close to us –children, parents.

How did we get here and what can be done? Unfortunately, the first temptation is to revenge ourselves. To butcher those animals, by running them over with the car, crushing their legs, braking their spine or just beating them to death.

I implore you not to do so! I move over the fact that the dog is man’s best friend and get to the situation in which these poor animals are. They have no master, no place to sleep, no food and have enemies everywhere. The stray dogs are condemned to a ruthless fight for survival.

And its not their fault that it has come to this! The guilt is ours, because when we had no more use of them or we just could not have them anymore, we threw them out on the streets. That was our first injustice made to them.

Many have died quickly, unable to adapt to the urban jungle. The survivors have followed the natural course of the world: they organized into packs, proliferated and learned how to find food. They also learned they need to protect themselves. For example, when you hit a dog or you step over his tail by mistake, his instincts tell him to bite.

And a brach with cubs will always be aggressive to those who invade its space. In similar conditions a man would act the same. It’s not in man’s favor to compare the homeless people with the stray dogs.

We threw them into the streets when the yards disappeared so that apartment buildings could be constructed. The humans and their representatives in City Halls are the ones who pretended to solve the issue for the past 18 years, when in fact, nothing was done.

Had the stray dogs been sterilized during the 1990’s, we wouldn’t have to face packs in the middle of the cities. Eventually and naturally, the “race” of the stray dogs would have gone extinct.

We won’t let the mayors sleep at night for all the citizens that were bit by the stray dogs. The mayors had the chance to solve this problem, they even had the money, but they did not care.

We’ll begin with the case of the drawing teacher that almost lost a finger after being attacked by a stray dog. We will support her in her intention to sue the City Hall, by offering free judicial assistance. We want her to receive compensations because she suffers from the indolence of some office men who hide behind institutions.

And we also want to create a precedent, so that every bite coming from a stray dog would be too expensive for the sleepy heads in the City Halls. Who knows, maybe that will wake them up.