June 28
On my last day in Athens, I met with a young animal welfare advocate who runs StraysHelp, an organization dedicated to caring for and finding homes for stray dogs and cats. Kleianna is really amazing young woman and represents great hope for the future of Greece and its animals. She has been helping animals since she was a child. She is currently studying at advanced university levels, International & European Studies, but somehow is also able to make time to run a website, write ads and run photos for adoption, vaccinate and sterilize dogs and cats, take care of sick and injured animals and plan for the future of animal welfare in Greece.
She does this not just because she loves animals, but also because there is no one else to do it. There are very few shelters, and even those that exist are not always better than life in the street. There are 400 municipalities in Greece, yet only 40 actually have programs for strays. Many of these programs are only for sterilization, not adoption, no shelters. Some do sterilizations but don't give antibiotics, so when they release dogs back into the streets, sometimes the dogs die from infections.
There is no help from the state for shelters or animal welfare. Apparently the EU used to provide funding for shelters in Greece, but the word is that money was being diverted by officials (corruption), and no shelters were built. Because shelters were not being built, the EU stopped sending money. Although a law was passed in 2003, making mayors responsible for stray dogs of their area, shelters, sterilizations, vaccinations, adoptions, very little has been done. The municipality of Athens, in central Athens, is one of the few locales providing good services.
Kleianna relays other facts of interest. Although microchipping is a law, microchips are inserted by pet shops and often they fail to complete registration of owner information, so the chips are untrackable. Responsible pet ownership is still a developing concept. People will purchase purebred dogs for status without knowledge or regard for whether the breed is the appropriate for them. She talks of an instance when in a pet store buying food for her cats, she encountered a woman who wanted to buy a Rottweiler because her boyfriend had one. The woman relented, when after noticing she had long fingernails, Kleianna smartly told her this dog would break her nails.
The uplifting news is that she sees young people more willing to help, and they understand more responsibility of adopting. We talk about some ideas that might be created to encourage more sterilizations, vaccinations and microchips. We talk about working together next year to make even more of an impact. Perhaps, the most exciting thing we talk about is that one of the reasons she is studying the curriculum she is, is that she has ambitions for the offices of the ministries, who are responsible for strays. Her goal is to help shape the policies of her country and create a new future for Greece and its animals.
Read about the rest of Zoe's journey: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V and Part VI.
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