Odai Animal Shelter

Dear animal lovers,
Firstly, I would like to introduce myself and thank you for your attention. I hereby turn to you in great hope, namely with the request for urgent adoption help for the dogs in the state animal shelter (killing centre) Odai.

I am Ilinca Macarie, I live in Bucharest, I am privately active in animal protection and I have been a member of the City Council of the 1st District of Bucharest since 2016. The Odai Animal Shelter, managed by the city, is one of my priorities as a city councillor.

This shelter had a relatively bad reputation until 2016, as it was not managed transparently at all and no volunteers or animal welfare organisations were allowed to enter. Even at that time, a number of about 700 dogs was indicated, and one did not really knew
what happened to these dogs behind closed doors.

As a first improvement measure, a Facebook page was opened: "Help the dogs for Odai shelter", where we (volunteers, independent of the city administration) presented the dogs. The dogs have not been photographed or presented for adoption to date.

We started photographing the dogs ourselves or with professionals and that helped us a lot to get some adoptions going quickly. We soon realised that most of the dogs were not adoptable and that they desperately needed socialisation and training to overcome their fears and to trust us humans again.

The shelter is located on a city police compound, on the outskirts, in the north of Bucharest. About 800 dogs are kept in kennels in groups of about 4 -5 dogs. The planning of the shelter is extremely poor, so that the facilities are damaged, the drains are often blocked and the water does not drain properly.

The dogs in the large shelter are never walked, are only fed and otherwise left to fend for themselves. These conditions, the lack of staff and the trapping methods have led to most of the dogs developing fears or aggression. In this context, we have initiated a training programme with a dog trainer who has trained a few selected dogs for companionship and socialisation especially in the context of children. Along the way, he also prepared
dogs for adoption. This means that the dogs have learned basic commands, have walked on the leash, but mainly they have learned to deal with other conspecifics and with people, adults and children.

A group of volunteers has gathered around the trainer who now regularly take the dogs out and spend time with them.
It was very important to get the dogs being prepared for adoption out of the chaos of the huge shelter first, and give them a slightly calmer environment nearby. Therefore, six new enclosures were built around the shelter clinic. The 20 or so dogs that are socialised spend their time either in these enclosures
or running free in a yard around the clinic. The stay in this zone is a kind of stopover. If a presented dog is reserved for adoption abroad, we will take it out of the shelter and it will be prepared
for the journey in a foster home.

We work together with the organisation "Eli for animals", whose director Claudia Dumitru has a lot of experience with dogs and also regularly places dogs in England. The organisation is a non-profit association and has a private shelter where it
cares for many older, sick or problem dogs. In addition, the animals rescued or taken from state institutions are prepared for their journey here. The last weeks or days before the trip, the dogs who already have requests are with Claudia, in the village of Frumusani, about 50 km from the Odai shelter.

Odai Animal Shelter ensures sterilisation (for adult dogs), rabies vaccination, deworming, microchipping, registration in the National Database and issuance of a National Animal ID Card. These costs are borne by the city and are not demanded from the end adopter. In addition, we vaccinate the dogs twice with the polivalent vaccination, a blood test (SNAP) is carried out, additional deworming and external parasite control is carried out and an EU passport is issued. "Eli for Animals" takes care of this and requests these costs from the association that places the animals abroad or from the final adopter. On request
the dogs can also be tested for compatibility with cats.

Here I would like to emphasise that the behaviour and compatibility of the dogs presented is extremely important to us. We only give friendly, compatible dogs for adoption and always try to give a very detailed description to the partners to avoid any nasty surprise. The dogs travel to Germany with the Zuzu company, but this is not a must.

Since the number of dogs in the shelter is extremely large and since unfortunately not enough prevention in the sense of sterilisation and education is carried out by the city, dogs continue to be regularly surrendered and the danger looms that, due to lack of space, euthanasia will be resorted to, which is unfortunately permitted by law. No matter how hard we try, we still don't manage to place enough dogs to produce a visible improvement
in the conditions in the shelter or to eliminate the danger of killing them.

Our great wish is to get about 15 dogs a month out of the shelter and place them. We would only be able to do that if we could work with several clubs in Germany. At the moment, we work with two small associations that mainly place small dogs, and that is unfortunately too little to really improve the situation in the long term.

Therefore, my big request to all of you: Please help us to find a nice home for several dogs in Germany every month. Our dogs are really all perfect for families and me and Claudia are always ready with help and info for all cases.

I'm adding a few photos so you can get an idea: Photos of the large shelter, the clinic area, volunteers at work and some of our charges who are currently looking for a home.

I thank you again for your patience and hope to be able to rescue many more dogs from Bucharest together with you.

Yours
Ilinca Macarie

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