The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are more than 200 million stray dogs worldwide with 50 million of those street dogs estimated in Central and Eastern Europe.

For these forgotten dogs, life on the streets is brutal; dogs are seen as vermin, and with no, or only basic, animal protection laws, anyone can mistreat them without risk of penalty or imprisonment, so dogs are routinely faced with poisoning, beatings and torture as well as struggling to survive in a hostile environment with starvation and disease a reality or freezing to death or falling victim to being run over by a tram or car and sustain horrific injuries. Those that survive, suffer the most devastating post traumatic stress.

In many countries with street dog populations, the Governments grant extermination licences to vigilante hunters to cull the dogs, who are paid per dog killed, with the method of culling left to the choice of the individual – our partners have found dogs tortured, poisoned, deliberately starved, hung, shot, axed, stabbed, beaten, raped, set on fire, purposely run over, dragged behind cars, bludgeoned to death, mouths and limbs tied up, mutilated and left to die a slow, agonising death.

This inhumane method of population control is both cruel and ineffective, and divides the community, where animal lovers live in abject horror with what they are powerless to prevent, whilst others just want to see the streets cleared of strays, no matter the cost. Yet studies have shown, that children and young people subjected to witnessing such cruelty as part of daily life, lose their compassion and empathy for others as the cruel scenes they experience negatively impact their senses and they become detached as a result. These children often grow up to develop mental health issues that can have a direct impact on the community. Foreign NGO’s such as K9 Rescue, working towards a more humane approach to stray population control, not only improves the living conditions of the dogs in these countries, it also creates a healthier environmentally sustainable solution for the communities concerned.