It was a tragic weekend for the stray animals in Greece. In addition to the terrible beating of the two puppies I reported earlier, there were numerous poisonings of both dogs and cats in another village. Sadly, this is a continuing reality in Greece, which is why we are working with local Greek animal advocates to educate the population on this cruel practice, as well as sterilization and humane treatment.
On Saturday 6th March, 3 cats were poisoned and died in Kapodistriou Street, prior to that 4 more cats poisoned in Pronia, 2 cats found poisoned behind the hospital and 2 dogs died together, both poisoned, in the old town of Nafplion. This is just an example of crimes committed in the last week. Please write, politely, to the Mayor of Nafplion, Mr. Panagiotis Anagnostaras expressing your concern and disgust as these are not isolated incidents, in fact becoming quite common place in his Municipality now. You might also point out that this may likely have a negative impact on tourism. His email address is nafpldim@otenet.gr
14 June 2009
We arrived our first day and visited one of the shelters in Athens, the KAZ shelter. KAZ is the Katafigio Adespoto Zoa, shelter for stray animals. They are an amazing facility, and a rarity in Greece. There are very few shelters, and many provide worse conditions than life on the streets. There is no money to support the building and operation of shelters, so they are virtually non-existent.
KAZ was originally designed as a transition facility, a temporary stop to treat sick and injured animals. They have a small surgical facility, recovery area and kennels. They have been forced to expand their kennels to try to accommodate dogs that have been abandoned or dropped off at the shelter in the middle of the night. Sometimes entire litters of puppies are left outside the shelter. This additional burden has made it even more difficult for them to continue to operate with the limited funding they have (none of which is from the Greek government).
We brought over a bunch of veterinary supplies that we collected from the states to donate to KAZ. The folks were thrilled to receive the supplies, which included medications, syringes, needles, surgical supplies and other medical items.
The next day, we headed up to Ioannina for the rest of our animal welfare work. We also brought some veterinary supplies for the local animal welfare folks here. We are building feeding stations that they will use for their feeding rounds that they make to help feed the local stray population there. We originally planned to build one each for two locations where they feed, but our group was so ambitious, we built another two!
animal welfare | insideout March 23, 2010 | 
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