Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Pile of Russian Dog Poop

Might want to test it for toxins:

"Russian dog owners edgy as rumors of mass poisoning spread online" by Karoun Demirjian, Washington Post  January 16, 2015

MOSCOW — Panic is percolating among Russia’s dog owners after Internet warnings that vigilantes are planning a canine culling next week, ostensibly to kill off strays, but endangering pets as well.

Dog owners are warning one another on various Russian chat forums and social media sites to look out for poisoned food, carry first-aid kits, and know how to give their dogs emergency doses of vitamin B6, should they show signs of being infected with Isoniazid, an anti-tuberculosis drug that is expected to be the preferred poison.

Nobody knows exactly who will be doing the poisoning, or where it will take place. But what in other countries might be dismissed as an online hoax is inspiring in Russia both serious media attention and a backlash from animal rights activists, who are directing their anxieties about this latest pooch-poisoning scare toward authorities.

‘‘Our law enforcement agencies condone these things,’’ Yuri Shamarin, who runs Dora, an animal shelter in Voronezh, told Russian news outlet gazeta.ru, explaining that to authorities, fewer dogs potentially attacking people meant fewer problems.

Russia has a long history of packs of dogs roaming the streets from the country’s industrial villages to its biggest cities. During the Soviet period, the government helped control the stray population by catching and often killing them.

But in modern-day Russia that doesn’t sit as well. A wealthier population has helped increase the pet population since the fall of the Soviet Union. Animal rights groups are gaining a following; even President Vladimir Putin claims to promote the protection of animals, especially wild animals, demonstrating his dedication in the past by cuddling with polar bears, flying with cranes, and releasing tigers into the wild.

In 2014, when officials in Sochi ordered a culling of stray dogs in advance of the Winter Olympic Games there, the backlash was so strong that authorities pledged to build a shelter for the animals instead.

You can Filipov up on the coverage.

Yet incidents of mass dog poisonings continue to be reported in cities as far-flung as St. Petersburg, Perm, and Novosibirsk — not to mention the capital.

Those evil Russians. Almost makes you want to go to war with 'em.

In 2012, a group of Muscovites, whose pet dogs died in a round of random poisonings, tried to track down the people who littered a city park with poisoned meat with a cash reward. But perpetrators are usually impossible to find.

‘‘This is not the first action of the dog hunters — no one can stop it,’’ Irina Novozhilova, head of the animal rights group Vita, told gazeta.ru.

Over the past few years, estimates of Moscow’s stray dog population alone have ranged from 25,000 to 35,000. And according to one dog expert, the pressure of busy city survival means strays are getting smarter — giving rise to both frustrations and fears the dogs could pose a danger to the public.

Novozhilova argued that both breeders and government officials had to take responsibility for controlling the animal population. ‘‘I do not know how we can protect the dogs from being poisoned,’’ she said.

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