The Balkans

Herzegovina

In Trebinje, a small city in south Bosnia and Herzegovina, abandoned dogs lived in a hellish, decrepit, dangerous and unhygienic shelter, perched on a rubbish dump where garbage was burned daily. We knew we had to help. Working tirelessly with the local municipality for two years, we constructed a state-of-the-art shelter, leading the way for a new approach to dealing with abandoned dogs in the region.

The new shelter (Azil Danica), almost entirely funded by NFA, was opened in May 2023, and we immediately relocated all 78 dogs to their new home. Each dog received a full health assessment, tests for common diseases, vaccine boosters as needed and a passport. The dogs love running in the large central playground and playing in the doggie paddling pool at the new shelter.

This is only the beginning, and we are committed to ensuring that the shelter lives up to its stated aim of "turning street dogs into pets" by providing funds for ongoing management and staff support, training, advice, and small contingency funds for dogs with exceptional health needs. Our biggest challenge going forward is to ensure that high standards of care are maintained and that the City of Trebinje maintains its commitment to meeting these standards so that the dogs can find their forever homes as quickly as possible.

Greece

Cats of Ithaca and Kefalonia (CIAK)

In summer, life is easy for Greek street cats because tourists and restaurant owners feed them. Winter is always a much sadder story, as street cats see their food supplies vanish along with the tourists. The situation on the Greek islands is particularly severe because very few people spend winters there. Network for Animals funds spay and neuter programs and provides food for street cats on the islands of Kefalonia and Ithaca.

Ghost Dogs of Aspropyrgos

There are more than a million street dogs in Greece, many of them abandoned pets. Aspropyrgos, a huge, semi-rural area near the city of Athens, is a dumping ground for unwanted animals. After being dumped there, the dogs face deprivation, starvation and the chilling prospect of being captured and used for illegal dog fighting, which is prevalent in the area’s numerous Roma (gypsy) camps.

The dogs are so afraid that they become “ghost dogs”, so called because when our team arrives to feed them, they appear, eat and then disappear into their hiding places like ghosts.

Together with our partner organization, Ghost Dogs of Aspropyrgos, we feed, sterilize and provide veterinary care for these street dogs while trying to find them loving forever homes. We have also been helping the “ghost dogs” survive the cruel, cold winters that threaten their lives every year for over a decade.

In July 2023: Wildfires broke out across large swathes of Greece, includes on Rhodes and Corfu, and around the capital, Athens. The wildfires – of which at least 80 were recorded – left animals trapped, helpless and alone as people fled to save themselves.

With our supporters’ help, we rushed funds for emergency rescue missions, food, animal transport crates and medical supplies to our partners on the ground: Corinthia Animal Rescue (CAR), Make it Pawsible (MIP) and Alma Libre – Hellenic Animal Rescue (ALHAR). These brave teams ventured into burnt, smouldering areas, saving terrified, trapped animals from death and providing life-saving treatment.

During times of crisis, animals are often the forgotten victims, left behind or abandoned as rescue teams fight to save human lives. We will always be on the ground when disaster strikes, dedicating our efforts to saving every animal life we can.

On the Greek island of Santorini, we expose horrific cruelty inflicted on donkeys every day in the peak of the summer. Donkeys and mules are forced to carry tourists up and down a 1300-foot (400 meter) high cliff all day in the baking sun without shade, food or water.

Donkey owners say if they provided food, the donkeys would defecate and soil the path, upsetting tourists.

Some donkeys have open wounds, others have crude wire muzzles over their mouths to prevent them from eating. The donkeys’ working hours are supposed to be regulated but the authorities have done nothing because of the money donkey-owners (called “muleteers”) rake in from visitors.

In 2018, the municipal authorities promised to improve working conditions for the donkeys by providing drinking troughs at points on the cliff path. This did not happen. When our team visited the island again in July 2019, they were attacked and whipped by the donkey owners. The police did nothing, saying they were on lunch.

We are now forming coalitions with other organizations to increase our pressure and will continue to press for a long-term solution to the problem of donkey exploitation on Santorini.

Montenegro

We support several projects in Montenegro, a small Balkan country that only became independent in 2006 following the breakup of Yugoslavia and the subsequent civil war. The country is still in a period of socio-economic transition, and animal welfare and associated reforms remain low priorities in the country. We have had some success encouraging the government to improve the laws and some positive measures were passed in late 2023. The projects that we support fall under the following broad categories:

Animal welfare legal reforms and awareness raising

We funded a nationwide survey of all of Montenegro’s animal shelters and submitted it to the government. Subsequently, one of our partners in Montenegro, Tijana Kovačević from the Association for the Promotion of Coexistence (Korina), was appointed to a national government animal welfare working group to revise animal welfare laws, giving Montenegro’s animals a voice at the highest level for the first time. We now fund Korina to provide an animal welfare legal advocacy project, offering support and representation for animal cruelty cases, training municipal police to improve enforcement of animal welfare laws, monitoring and taking direct action to enforce the work of the authorities in prosecuting cases, and lobbying to include animal welfare issues in the criminal code of Montenegro.

Support to improve municipal dog shelters

We work alongside municipal authorities to make lasting improvements to dog shelters, where conditions are often very poor. Much of this work involves direct action on the ground.

In Nikšić, Montenegro's second-largest city, we funded improvements for a local shelter after securing its commitment to change to a no-kill shelter and take a broader approach to dog population management. We provided insulated water tanks, fencing, kennels, CCTV and medical care, and equipped the shelter with a medical clinic. We also fund the NGO NUZZ in Nikšić, helping them to provide a feeding project for street dogs who do not live at the shelter, making sure they get a daily meal. The municipality also now funds a TNR (trap, neuter, return) program.

In Kotor, we have provided a puppy house and funds for a new quarantine area to reduce the risk of death for newly arrived unvaccinated dogs and puppies.

In Kolasin and Ulcinj, we are lobbying the municipalities to develop sustainable solutions to the problems of dog overpopulation, abandonment of street dogs and shelter care.

Support to improve the care of abandoned dogs

A handful of individuals, despite themselves living in conditions of economic hardship, continue to show their humanity by rescuing and caring for Montenegro’s many abandoned, neglected and sick street dogs. We endeavor to help as many of these small private shelters as we can, by providing funds for essentials such as food, medical care, kennels and fencing. In a farming area near Nikšić, for example, we support an impoverished farmer named Zelijana Delibasic who cares for a large group of abandoned street dogs and numerous feral cats in and around her property. We regularly provide food for her 33 dogs and numerous cats, and have funded microchips, vaccinations ,parasite treatments and the construction of a shared kennel to provide the dogs with shelter from snow and icy winds. We have also promised to provide fencing to prevent the animals from running into the busy main road nearby.

In Kolasin, located in the mountains of north Montenegro, 150 dogs live in a hugely underfunded sshelter,single-handedly run by Danijela Vuksanovic, who is suffering from advanced cancer. The situation in Kolasin provides a snapshot of some of the problems we face when helping animals. The law says the Kolasin municipality must fund and run an animal shelter. This it has persistently failed to do, leaving the dogs’ care in seriously ill and very poor condition. Without our support, those 150 dogs would die.

Network for Animals pays rent for the land, funds regular food deliveries and has bought winter-proof, insulated kennels to protect the dogs from the bitter snow and cold. We must raise further funds for new fencing to give the most traumatized dogs their own safe areas to run in.

The local municipality does nothing. It is disgraceful that Kolasin public servants ignore the law and the plight of the dogs, but sadly, situations like this are all too common, which is why the work we do is so important