BUCHAREST - When French film actress Brigitte Bardot began a
campaign to spare the thousands of stray dogs in Romania's capital
from being put down, she did it with a $150,000 donation
scheme.
A similar campaign is being waged by Ana-Maria Ciulcu, a
13-year-old schoolgirl with braces on her teeth who uses Facebook
to appeal to dog lovers all over Europe - and to make sure the dogs
go to the right homes.
"I like to know that my dogs will be spoiled, and will be allowed
to sit on the sofa ... so one of my first questions would be: 'Are
you going to chain him?'," Ciulcu told Reuters.
Ciulcu was a baby when Bardot started her sterilization campaign in
2001. Now she speaks fluent German and has a grasp of the Internet,
and she's used both to rescue 150 strays and ship them to Germany,
Austria and Belgium since September.
But Bucharest's state-funded wards now hold 2,800 dogs, and 2,000
dogs have been euthanized in the past two months, according to
Romania's Authority for Animal Surveillance and Protection. Foreign
citizens, mainly German and British, have directly adopted about 30
dogs since September, ASPA Director Razvan Bancescu told
Reuters.
Some 60,000 strays roam Bucharest. Last year, a four-year-old boy
died after he was mauled by a stray beside a Bucharest park. Street
protests demanded something be done about the dogs. The authorities
began enforcing the euthanasia rules, which enable city halls to
put down dogs caught in public spaces if they are not adopted
within two weeks.
The strays are thought to be a legacy of the dictator Nicolae
Ceausescu's decision to bulldoze Bucharest's historic center in the
1980s to make way for a gargantuan "House of the People". Thousands
of guard dogs were abandoned by residents who had been forcibly
relocated into small apartments.
SPURRED TO ACTION
Ciulcu collects strays on the street. They go to a temporary
private shelter, or to the backyard of her home on the capital's
outskirts. She has a veterinarian vaccinate them and give them
microchip identification tags and eventually gets international
passports for them.
All costs, from medicines, vaccines and neutering to identification
chips and passports, are covered by Ana-Maria's family - about 150
euros ($210) per dog. Transporting the animals to their
destinations is covered by the new owner.
She spends up to about two hours a day selecting owners from among
thousands of would-be pet owners who visit her page
(www.facebook.com/anamaria.ciulcu). Few Romanians are among
them.
"Romanians generally want to adopt only a pure breed," she
said.
Ciulcu, who wants to become a doctor, believes keeping animals
together in state-funded shelters is not a solution, just an
extermination plan. Until she takes up her medical studies, her
ambition is to save as many dogs as she can.
"Dogs can't live packed together," she said. "They need
affection."
Ana-Maria Ciulcu takes pictures of a dog she rescued from the
streets of Bucharest while a veterinary doctor makes him a
vaccine
Ana-Maria Ciulcu pets Pedro, a dog rescued from a shelter, while
observing her Facebook page in Bucharest
Ana-Maria Ciulcu surfs her Facebook page on her mobile
phone
A stray dog is taken from the street by dog catchers in
Bucharest
