Romanian Rescue, Helping or Hindering?
We adopted our dog four and a half years ago without knowing anything about him or his breed, background or anything. We were given very little information from the charity.
We completed an online form, they called us, asked us some questions about our family and home and we were told we could go and collect him, and so we did.
Looking back that raises so many red flags for me.
No initial visit with the dog to check compatibility
When we collected him, he was just handed over outside of the gates of where he had been staying and told he had a cut near his eye
He was incredibly anxious in the car and barked for the entire journey home. When we got him home we saw that the cut was severely infected, his hair was terribly matted and unkempt and he was filthy. So the next day we took him to the vet and the groomers, we also discovered he had an infection in both ears. We contacted the dog charity and explained the situation and they said they would deduct the vet fee from the adoption fees. But that didn’t explain how a dog that had been in their care for the last few months could be in such a state.
We were added to facebook group for people who had adopted dogs from this charity and with a quick search I discovered that we weren’t Oakley’s first adopted family. I sent a message to the previous owner and asked about Oakley and why they sent him back to the charity. They told me that they couldn’t handle him and he didn’t get on with their other dog.
So with that information we contacted the charity and requested more information about Oakley’s history and this is what we were told.
Oakley was found at roughly three months old tied up in a village in the Carpathian Mountains region of Romania, next to a pond. It was assumed that he had been left by sheep farmers because he is quite small for his breed so he would have been the runt of the litter. Mioritic Shepherd dogs guard thousands of sheep in large packs and are known to fight wolves, bears and lynxes to protect the herd.
He was then neutered at roughly four months old and then when he was six months old he was packed into a van and made the long arduous journey to the UK.
When he reached the UK he was placed in a foster home with nearly forty other dogs, with no segregated facilities for him to have his own space, they were all fed together and basically left to their own devices.
At home with us Oakley showed some food aggression particularly when it involves bones and other fresh food. He was also very underweight. He also had not developed bite inhibition. He would also find gaps in fences and bushes to jump through into the neighbours garden.
He would spend hours hiding under the table trying to be invisible. He detested going in his crate, to the point he injured himself destroying it to get out. To which I said to my husband no more crate. He had serious separation anxiety and would chew on my oak chairs and table.
For months we had to show endless patience and compassion and slowly he began to settle in to his new place with our family.
The one thing he never did was mess inside the house.
He is a very vocal dog and if he needs something he will let you know, whatever the time is, much to the annoyance of our neighbours, who have even suggested that we should have him debarked, to which I replied you get your voice surgically removed then!
The barking is breed specific and nothing can change that, so we figure out what it is that he wants and then he is fine.
Even now he is still an anxious dog especially when it comes to going out in the car. So clearly the journey over here traumatised him and left him scarred for life.
Yet Oakley is classed as one of the lucky ones because he didn’t come from a life on the streets or worse a kill shelter.
So the question I am asking is knowing the trauma Oakley has experienced and the resulting anxiety that he has been left living with, what about the other dogs who have experienced trauma from before the journey from either living on the streets or worse in a kill shelter is it worth adding to that and bringing them over to the UK and expecting inexperienced owners take on these challenges?
All the vets that I have spoken with have said that it is cruel to put the dogs through this and that the journey from Romania to the UK is much more traumatic than living on the streets.
I have a friend from Romania who told me that in the villages the stray dogs are seen as the village dogs, people feed them, children play with them. They don’t keep them inside.
So are we getting involved where we don’t need to be? Are we forcing our beliefs of how animals should be kept as pets onto others? In the farming communities dogs and cats are not pets they are part of the community and they have jobs to do. Cats catch mice and other pests. Dogs herd and protect the sheep and other livestock.
I am not picking a side I am merely providing food for thought.
I personally don’t think kill shelters should be allowed but I am just one person and who am I to challenge a foreign government that allows them.
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