UK

RSPCA Cat Rescue Centres Reach Crisis Point

RSPCA cat rescue centres are facing severe pressure as increasing numbers of cats and kittens enter care. The charity says incidents involving ten or more cats being found at a single property have risen by 67% in a year. Centres are also dealing with large numbers of kittens and pregnant cats, adding further pressure to already stretched accommodation and resources.

USA

San Diego Humane Society Reaches 171% Dog Capacity

San Diego Humane Society has reported that its dog accommodation has reached 171% of capacity as shelters continue to struggle with the number of animals needing somewhere to go. The organisation recently received 103 animals in a single day while already caring for almost 1,900 animals across its facilities. The public is being encouraged to adopt, foster and help reunite lost dogs with their families where possible.

UK

Dog Food Recalled Following Reports Of Serious Eye Problems

Fresh dog food company Years has recalled its meals while an investigation takes place into reports of dogs developing sudden bilateral dry eye. The condition can cause significant pain and, in severe cases, sight loss. A possible association with buckwheat is being investigated, although the precise cause has not yet been established.

USA

More Than 50 Shelter Dogs & Cats Evacuated Following Flooding In The US

More than 50 dogs and cats have been evacuated from animal shelters affected by flooding in Indiana and West Virginia. The ASPCA deployed emergency response teams to help move animals from affected facilities and relieve pressure on local organisations dealing with the consequences of the flooding.

Belgium

Brussels Steps Up Support For Stray Cat Rescue

A Brussels municipality has provided new premises for Ever’y Cat as the organisation responds to growing demand for help with stray and abandoned cats. The rescue has been given use of a municipal pavilion, providing additional space for its work and emergency accommodation. The move comes as organisations dealing with community and abandoned cats continue to face pressure on available capacity.

UK

31 Cats Removed From Property In Major Welsh Animal Welfare Case

Thirty one cats were among a large number of animals removed from a property in Newport, Wales, following an RSPCA investigation. Officers also found more than 100 guinea pigs. The animals were discovered in conditions involving accumulated faeces, flies and other welfare hazards, with the scale of the case requiring a substantial rescue operation.

End of Bulletin

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There was a time when abandonment in Türkiye often came with an explanation. Somebody would leave a dog and word would eventually reach us that the family had moved, they had a new baby, they could no longer afford the dog, the dog had become too difficult or, quite simply, they did not want them anymore.

None of those reasons made abandoning a dog accep…

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Distressing footage published by Turkish animal advocate Alper Karamış, who works online as DokuzOlmaz, has raised serious concerns about the treatment and condition of animals in İskenderun.

But the conditions documented in the footage are only part of the story. There was an intervention. Animals were helped. And subsequent reporting provides important information about what happened afterwards.

Dog Desk Animal Action has examined the available Turkish reporting to document both the concerns raised and, importantly, what happened to the animals.

The footage

Karamış identified the case as İskenderun. His video shows a dog within an enclosure together with a number of kittens and cats in visibly concerning conditions, raising serious concerns about neglect and the standard of care being provided.

In a follow-up published on 24 August, Karamış said that the images had been recorded several days previously and provided further information about what happened afterwards.

He reported that the old İskenderun shelter had been demolished and its animals transferred to Antakya. He also said that a new shelter, announced approximately a year and a half earlier and under construction for around a year, had not yet opened.

Dog Desk Animal Action has not identified an official municipal statement independently confirming the reported demolition or transfer, so we are recording these developments as Karamış’s account.

What happened to the animals?

This is perhaps the most important part of the story.

Local news platform Hatay Olay subsequently published an account attributed to a visitor to the shelter, providing considerably more information about the animals and the intervention that followed.

The visitor described finding kittens in urgent need of help. They reported animals that were collapsed or struggling to breathe, kittens with serious health problems and injuries, and a very young motherless kitten in a severely weakened condition.

The visitor also described serious concerns in the dog area, including a dog they said was chained and a puppy they reported had died.

But the visitor did more than document what they found.

According to the account published by Hatay Olay, the cats were removed and taken for emergency veterinary treatment.

Two cats began treatment. Sadly, one subsequently died. The other cats were transferred to volunteer groups in Antakya, where their treatment and care could continue.

We therefore know that animals identified as needing urgent help received intervention and veterinary care.

There had already been plans to replace the old shelter

The condition and future of İskenderun’s existing municipal shelter had been under discussion well before these events.

In April 2025, local reporting quoted İskenderun Mayor Mehmet Dönmez describing the existing facility as having basic or primitive conditions and announcing plans for a new animal care facility with capacity for approximately 1,000 animals.

The following month, reporting said that the existing shelter in Meydan Mahallesi had operated since 2009 and had capacity for approximately 280 animals. The municipality planned an integrated facility capable of accommodating around 1,000 animals, including operating rooms, observation rooms, quarantine facilities and adoption areas. The mayor said at the time that the project was expected to be completed within approximately four months.

Earlier municipal records had also identified the need to rebuild the ageing shelter so that animals could be cared for in healthier and more modern conditions.

Concerns about the adequacy of the old facility therefore did not begin in August 2026. The need to replace it had already been publicly acknowledged.

In his August 2026 account, Karamış said that the new shelter had been announced approximately a year and a half earlier and that work had been underway for around a year, but that it had not yet opened.

That broadly corresponds with the publicly documented redevelopment programme, although Dog Desk Animal Action has not independently established the current construction or opening status of the new facility.

Timeline

April 2025 A new shelter is announced

İskenderun Mayor Mehmet Dönmez describes the existing shelter as having basic or primitive conditions and announces plans for a new facility capable of accommodating around 1,000 animals.

May 2025 Plans for the replacement facility are detailed

Reporting says that the existing Meydan Mahallesi shelter has operated since 2009 and has capacity for approximately 280 animals. Plans for the new facility include treatment, observation, quarantine and adoption areas, with completion anticipated within approximately four months.

August 2026 Concerning conditions are documented

Alper Karamış/DokuzOlmaz publishes footage he identifies as relating to İskenderun, showing animals in visibly concerning circumstances.

Karamış later says that the images had been recorded several days before his 24 August post.

Animals receive help

An account subsequently published by Hatay Olay describes cats requiring urgent assistance being removed and taken for emergency veterinary treatment.

Two cats begin treatment. One sadly dies. Other cats are transferred to volunteer groups in Antakya so that their treatment and care can continue.

24 August 2026 Karamış reports the old shelter has been demolished

Karamış reports that the old İskenderun shelter had been demolished and its animals transferred to Antakya.

He also reports that the new shelter, which had been under construction for around a year, had not yet opened.

Dog Desk Animal Action has not independently confirmed the reported demolition or transfer through an official municipal source.

31 August 2026 Further local reporting emerges

Hatay Olay reports on the case, publishing further footage alongside the visitor's account and providing important information about what happened to some of the animals afterwards.

The story did not end with the footage

There is a tendency for disturbing footage involving animals to travel much further than the information that follows it. In this case, that risks leaving people with the impression that animals were filmed suffering and nothing happened.

That is not the complete story.

Cats identified as needing urgent help were removed. Veterinary treatment was provided. Other cats were transferred into the care of volunteers in Antakya. Sadly, one cat did not survive.

Separately, Alper Karamış reported that İskenderun’s old shelter was demolished and the animals housed there were transferred to Antakya. That reported demolition and transfer has not yet been independently confirmed through an official municipal source.

There are still questions. We want to know what happened to the animals reportedly transferred from the old shelter, whether those requiring treatment were assessed and treated, and what has happened with the new İskenderun facility announced in 2025.

Those are questions we will continue to follow. But they should not obscure an important part of what happened after these conditions were documented.

The work of advocates such as Alper Karamış is important. Visiting facilities, documenting what is found and continuing to follow what happens afterwards helps create a public record that might otherwise not exist. It also means that attention does not have to end with a piece of distressing footage; we can begin to understand what happened next.

We are grateful to Alper for the work he does and for continuing to document conditions affecting animals in Türkiye.

People intervened. Animals received help. And the story did not end with the footage.

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On 27 August 2026, Turkish animal welfare advocate Mr Alper Karamış published deeply concerning footage following a visit to the municipal animal shelter in Kumru, in Türkiye’s Ordu province. His visit came just weeks after the opening of a new facility there and presented a markedly different picture from the positive public record surrounding its development.

Dog Desk Animal Action has reviewed and archived the footage. Some of the material is extremely distressing and we have chosen not to reproduce the most disturbing images here. Our purpose is to document what was reported, place it within the available public record and follow subsequent developments.

Mr Karamış is a trusted animal welfare advocate whose work we have followed. He approaches shelter monitoring in a balanced and professional manner, visiting facilities, documenting what he finds and engaging with the relevant authorities. His work in Ordu was not limited to Kumru. He said that during a single day he visited one animal transfer centre and three shelters across the province.

Kumru’s facility forms part of the changing infrastructure being developed for free roaming dogs across Türkiye. As municipalities respond to changes in the country’s animal protection legislation and the collection of dogs from public spaces, shelters and so called natural living areas are being developed across the country.

In Ordu, that process has been the subject of meetings involving the Governorate, municipalities and the public bodies responsible for animal protection and veterinary services. On 21 January 2026, Governor Muammer Erol chaired a meeting examining progress on shelters and natural living areas across the province. Kumru was specifically among the districts discussed.

By July, the Governor was speaking positively about the facility being developed in Kumru, comparing it favourably with work undertaken in Ünye and indicating that work across the province was approaching completion.

Then, on 5 August 2026, local media reported the opening of Kumru’s Can Dostlar Doğal Yaşam Alanı, or Companion Animals Natural Living Area, in Çatılı.

Further developments followed quickly. On 12 August, Kumru Municipality and Kumru State Hospital signed an agreement intended to direct suitable surplus food from the hospital to animals at the facility. Mayor Yusuf Yalçuva subsequently said that more than 300 animals were being accommodated there.

The public picture surrounding Kumru’s new facility and the conditions subsequently reported by Mr Karamış are markedly different.

On 27 August, just 22 days after the reported opening, Mr Karamış published footage following his visit to Kumru.

He reported that no staff or veterinarian was present at the time of his visit. He described sick and injured dogs, animals he believed had died, sanitation problems and concerns about water and the general care available to the animals. He also said that similar concerns had been reported at the facility approximately a month earlier.

These are Mr Karamış’s observations, and that distinction is important. Dog Desk Animal Action was not present at Kumru and we are not presenting his account as findings independently made by us.

We have, however, reviewed the footage he published. It shows numerous dogs and conditions that give substantial cause for concern. Some sections contain extremely distressing imagery, including what appear to be animal remains. We have retained the footage within our evidence record rather than reproducing those images here.

The provenance of the material is also important. Mr Karamış identified the facility as Kumru following his visit and publicly brought his observations to the attention of Kumru Municipality, Ordu Nature Conservation and National Parks and the Ordu Governorate.

His observations across Ordu extended beyond the conditions he reported at individual facilities. Following his visits, Mr Karamış also discussed pressure within the wider municipal system. He said municipalities expected to provide treatment and sterilisation through their own facilities were sending animals to Ordu Metropolitan Municipality. In his assessment, this was placing additional pressure on veterinary teams and contributing to animals accumulating within the central system.

That wider context is worth recording because Türkiye’s changing approach to its free roaming dog population requires considerably more than the construction of facilities.

Once dogs are collected, the facilities receiving them need sufficient capacity, veterinary provision, staffing, food, clean water, sanitation, disease management and systems capable of identifying and treating sick and injured animals. As more dogs enter municipal care, understanding how those systems function in practice becomes increasingly important.

The chronology at Kumru is particularly striking.

21 January 2026: Ordu Governorate holds a meeting chaired by Governor Muammer Erol examining progress on shelters and natural living areas across the province. Kumru is among the districts discussed.

July 2026: Governor Erol speaks positively about the facility being developed in Kumru, comparing it favourably with the facility in Ünye.

5 August 2026: Local media reports the opening of Kumru’s Can Dostlar Natural Living Area in Çatılı.

12 August 2026: Kumru Municipality and Kumru State Hospital sign an agreement intended to provide suitable surplus food for animals at the facility.

August 2026: Mayor Yusuf Yalçuva says that more than 300 animals are being accommodated at the facility.

27 August 2026: Mr Karamış publishes his account and footage following a visit to Kumru, reporting serious concerns about the conditions he encountered. Kumru Municipality, Ordu Nature Conservation and National Parks and the Ordu Governorate are publicly alerted to his observations.

1 September 2026: Dog Desk Animal Action has identified no publicly available response from Kumru Municipality or the Ordu Governorate specifically addressing the conditions documented during the 27 August visit. We have also found no publicly available confirmation of an intervention for the dogs following that visit.

That final point requires some care. The absence of a public statement or report does not establish that no action has been taken. Discussions, inspections, veterinary interventions or changes at the facility may have occurred without being made public. Only a few days have passed since Mr Karamış published his findings, and we will continue looking for further information.

There is a wider reason we are documenting Kumru.

Türkiye’s approach to its free roaming dogs is changing rapidly, with increasing numbers of dogs being moved from public spaces into municipal shelters and natural living areas. Much of the public record understandably focuses on collection programmes, construction, capacity and the opening of new facilities.

What happens after collection is equally important.

Kumru is one facility in one province, and a visit on a single day cannot tell us what is happening across an entire national system. It can, however, provide another piece of evidence about how that system is developing in practice and where difficulties may emerge as facilities begin receiving significant numbers of animals.

That is why we will continue following Kumru.

If a response is published by the municipality or Governorate, if an inspection is reported, if Mr Karamış provides a follow-up, or if publicly available evidence emerges of veterinary intervention or changes at the facility, we will add those developments to the record.

Twenty two days separate the reported opening of Kumru’s new facility and Mr Karamış’s publication of what he encountered there.

For us, the important part of this story is what happens to the dogs next.

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Across the world, dogs are being taken from streets and communities and placed into publicly funded shelters, municipal facilities, pounds and other forms of accommodation. Governments and local authorities spend public money collecting, housing and managing those dogs, yet in many places it can be surprisingly difficult to establish something as basic as where the dogs are being held, how many are there, what happens to them once they enter the system or who is responsible for checking the conditions in which they are kept.

That is why Dog Desk Animal Action is launching Show Us Your Shelter.

Over the past year, our work monitoring developments affecting dogs internationally has repeatedly brought us back to the same problem. A decision is announced, dogs are collected, a municipality says animals are being taken into its shelter system and then the trail can become much harder to follow. Sometimes detailed information is published. Sometimes only fragments are available. Sometimes finding basic figures requires searching through municipal announcements, government documents and local reporting. And sometimes we simply cannot establish from publicly available information what happened to the dogs after they were taken away.

That worries us. When a dog enters a publicly funded system, there should be a record of what happens next. Did that dog return to an owner? Was the dog adopted? Transferred elsewhere? Returned to the community where that is permitted? Is the dog still in care? Did the dog die? Was the dog euthanised? We believe those are perfectly reasonable questions for the public to be able to answer.

We also want to understand what oversight exists. Who inspects these facilities? When was the last inspection? What did inspectors find? If improvements were required, were they made? Again, this isn’t specialist information that should only become visible after somebody starts asking difficult questions. It is basic information about the operation of a publicly funded service responsible for living animals. And this is important for another reason. Transparency protects good shelters too.

There are municipal shelters and public facilities where people are doing difficult work under enormous pressure. Staff may be caring for large numbers of dogs with limited resources while facing criticism from people who have very little information about what is actually happening inside. Publishing clear figures, inspection findings and outcomes gives those facilities an opportunity to demonstrate their work as well as allowing genuine problems to be identified.

So we are not beginning this campaign with an assumption that every shelter we are shown has something to hide or is failing. We are beginning with a much simpler principle: if the public funds the system, the public should be able to see how the system is working.

Our approach is built around three things: Visibility. Numbers. Inspection.

Can people find the shelter and identify who is responsible for it? Can they see how many dogs enter the system and what happens to them? And can they establish who provides independent or official oversight and what that oversight has found?

To begin answering those questions globally, we need to know where the shelters are. And that is where we are asking for your help. If you know of a publicly funded dog shelter where you live, show it to us. Tell us the country and the town or city. If you know the shelter’s name, tell us that too. If you already know which municipality or public authority operates it, you can tell us, but you don’t need to.

Most importantly, we are not asking you to investigate it. Please don’t visit a shelter on our behalf. Don’t approach staff or authorities. Don’t start searching for inspection reports or trying to obtain statistics. You don’t need to prove that there is a problem, and you don’t need to establish whether the shelter is good or bad. Just tell us where it is. We’ll take it from there.

Dog Desk Animal Action will carry out the research. We will look for the information already in the public domain, establish who is responsible for the facility and, where appropriate, approach the relevant authority directly for information that we have been unable to establish.

We will record what we find carefully. If information is publicly available, we will record that. If an authority provides information when asked, we will record that too. If information is only partially available, if an authority tells us it does not hold particular information, or if we receive no response, that will be recorded for what it is. A missing document or unanswered email will not be turned into an allegation about what is happening to dogs. This is about building evidence, not assumptions.

Alongside the campaign, we have published an open letter to governments, municipalities and public authorities responsible for publicly funded dog shelters. We are asking them to make basic information about their shelter systems routinely available: where dogs are held, how many enter, what happens to them, who inspects the facilities and what those inspections find. Members of the public can add their names to that request.

And all of this work has a destination.

In 2027, Dog Desk Animal Action will publish the Global Shelter Pressure Map. The aim is to begin building a global picture of publicly funded dog shelter systems using evidence that can be checked, compared and understood. Show Us Your Shelter is one of the ways we begin finding the facilities that need to be researched.

There are thousands of municipalities, councils and public authorities around the world. We cannot know every shelter they operate. But the people who live in those communities often do. So this September, we’re asking one very simple question.

Do you know where your publicly funded dog shelter is?

Show us. That’s it. We’ll take it from here. Public Money. Public Accountability.

Visit the Show Us Your Shelter campaign page to tell us about a publicly funded shelter in your area and add your name to our open letter calling for greater transparency and accountability.

Show Us Your Shelter

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EU

New EU-Wide Welfare Rules For Dogs & Cats

New European Union rules covering the welfare and traceability of dogs and cats have now been formally published. Regulation (EU) 2026/1818 establishes common requirements covering areas including breeding establishments, shelters and sellers, alongside identification and registration measures designed to improve traceability. The legislation represents a significant move towards common standards across EU member states.

Cuba

Cuba’s Economic Crisis Is Putting Cat Rescue Under Pressure

Animal rescuers in Havana are struggling to care for stray and abandoned cats as Cuba’s continuing economic crisis affects access to food, medicines and veterinary supplies. Rescue organisations are working against shortages that are making already difficult animal welfare work increasingly challenging.

USA

More Than 70 Dogs Rescued After Storm Exposes Hoarding Situation In The US

More than 70 dogs were discovered in an Indiana trailer after a tree fell during a storm and exposed what authorities described as a hoarding situation. Cats were also found at the property. Humane Indiana said the operation became the largest hoarding rescue it has undertaken, placing considerable demands on the organisation as the animals were removed and assessed.

UK

Scotland Clarifies Licensing Rules For Animal Rehoming Organisations

The Scottish Government has updated guidance covering organisations rehoming animals in Scotland. The rules can require organisations rehoming five or more animals during a 12-month period to obtain an animal welfare establishment licence. Importantly, the requirements can also apply to organisations based outside Scotland if animals are being rehomed to people within Scotland.

UK

Cat Loses Both Ears Following Severe Sun Damage

Battersea has highlighted the case of a cat named Buddy who required both ears to be removed after developing cancerous and precancerous lesions associated with exposure to ultraviolet light. The charity is using his case to raise awareness that cats, particularly those with pale or sparsely furred areas, can also be vulnerable to sun damage.

USA

First Evidence-Based First-Aid Guidelines For Dogs & Cats Released

New evidence-based first-aid guidelines have been published for dogs and cats. Developed through the RECOVER Initiative, the guidance is intended to provide a more consistent approach to recognising emergencies and giving immediate assistance before professional veterinary treatment is available. The work brings together available scientific evidence and expert consensus to establish practical first-aid recommendations specifically for companion animals.

End Of Bulletin

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Uganda is already on the Dog Desk Animal Action Global Stray Dog Crisis Map Watchlist, and a development in Adjumani District has given us another reason to keep it there. During a district task force meeting on 27 August, Assistant Resident District Commissioner Sharon Apio Baru reportedly called for the immediate culling of stray dogs and proposed poisoning as the method.

There is another part of the reported comments that particularly concerns us. The official reportedly suggested that poisoning had been used in other districts. We want to know where those operations took place, which authorities authorised them, how many dogs were killed and what substances were used. We also want to establish whether poisoning free roaming dogs is permitted or recognised as a method of dog population control in Uganda.

Those are important questions because not only is it a vile, cruel method of culling that causes the dog extreme & prolonged suffering, the poison does not know which animal an authority intends to kill. An owned dog can encounter poisoned bait. So can community dogs, wildlife and other animals. Poisoned carcasses can create another route of exposure.

There is also a much bigger question about what killing achieves - nothing!

Free roaming dog populations do not appear simply because dogs have not been killed quickly enough. They are shaped by reproduction, abandonment, roaming owned dogs, access to food and waste, responsible ownership and the availability of sustained population management programmes. Remove dogs without addressing those conditions and the conditions remain. Other dogs can reproduce, move into vacated territories or be abandoned into the same environment.

Killing can make dogs disappear from a particular street. That is not the same thing as solving the problem.

Effective population management requires authorities to understand the dog population they are dealing with and intervene before killing becomes the default response. Sterilisation needs to operate at meaningful scale. Owned dogs need to be identifiable. Abandonment and uncontrolled breeding need to be addressed. Communities need access to veterinary services and local authorities need strategies capable of being sustained for years rather than days.

None of that offers the immediate visibility of a cull. It does something much more important. It changes the conditions that create the population in the first place.

Uganda was already on our Watchlist before the comments from Adjumani. We are not changing its classification because one official has proposed poisoning dogs, but we are recording this development as part of the evidence we use to assess the direction in which the country is moving.

If Adjumani authorises a poisoning operation, we will record it. If we establish that other Ugandan districts have already used poisoning as a method of controlling free roaming dogs, we will examine those operations too. We will look for municipal and district instructions, official announcements, procurement records and evidence showing what happened to the dogs.

We will also look for the alternative story, because Uganda does not have to move towards lethal control. If authorities are expanding sterilisation, developing humane population management programmes or replacing killing with sustainable interventions, that evidence belongs on our map record as well.

The Global Stray Dog Crisis Map is not intended simply to identify countries where something terrible has already happened. The Watchlist exists partly so that we can identify warning signs while there is still an opportunity for a different direction to be taken. Adjumani is one of those warning signs.

For now, Uganda remains on the Watchlist. But when poisoning stray dogs is being proposed by a government official, we need to know whether we are hearing an isolated suggestion or seeing the beginnings of something much bigger.

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I have been thinking a great deal about the way animal welfare uses social media and, more importantly, what happens to the person sitting on the other side of the screen. Social media has given animal welfare an extraordinary ability to reach people. It can expose something that might otherwise have remained hidden, find a dog a home, raise money for treatment, put pressure on decision-makers and introduce thousands of people to an issue they previously knew nothing about. We use it for all of those reasons and we will continue to use it, but there is another side to it that I think we need to talk about.

Social media rewards emotion, and particularly strong emotion. Rage travels. Horror travels. Shock travels. The things that make us angry or distressed are often the things that make us stop, watch, comment and share. In animal welfare there is an almost limitless supply of material capable of producing those reactions, because terrible things really are happening to animals every day. There are dogs starving, dogs being abused, dogs living in appalling conditions and dogs being failed by systems that are supposed to protect them. Some of those things need to be seen and some absolutely need to be exposed, but the fact that suffering performs well on social media should make those of us publishing it think carefully about how we use it.

Recently somebody told me that she had watched a particularly distressing piece of animal welfare content and had been so affected by it that afterwards she felt guilty because she had eaten that day & the dogs in the content were starving. I couldn’t stop thinking about that. A woman sitting at home eating a meal isn’t responsible for the fact that somewhere else a dog is starving. Making her experience that dog’s suffering so intensely that she feels guilty for eating doesn’t put food in the dog’s bowl. It doesn’t change the policy that failed the dog, improve the shelter it is living in, pay for veterinary treatment or hold anybody responsible to account. All that has happened is that some of the suffering has travelled from the dog on the screen to the person watching it.

We don’t need people to suffer with the dogs in order to care about them.

There is a difference between informing somebody and overwhelming them. There is a difference between creating urgency and creating helplessness. There is also a difference between publishing something because people genuinely need to know about it and publishing it because we know it will produce a powerful reaction. Social media algorithms may not recognise those distinctions, but animal welfare organisations should.

Those of us working in animal welfare also know what constant exposure to suffering feels like. We see far more than we ever publish. We receive photographs and videos, read reports, investigate claims, speak to people dealing with situations on the ground and follow individual dogs through circumstances that can be incredibly difficult. You finish looking at one case and another arrives. Then another. There is always another dog somewhere in trouble and, once you start looking internationally, the scale of it can feel almost impossible to comprehend.

There is only so much suffering a person can absorb. That applies to rescuers, advocates and campaigners, but it also applies to the people who follow us. If every encounter somebody has with animal welfare brings another starving dog, another injured dog, another terrible shelter, another horrifying video and another reason to be angry, eventually some people will protect themselves in the most understandable way possible. They will look away. That doesn’t necessarily mean they stopped caring. It may simply mean that caring became too painful.

I don’t want Dog Desk Animal Action to contribute unnecessarily to that.

That doesn’t mean difficult subjects are disappearing from our social media. They aren’t. We will continue investigating, challenging decisions, examining evidence and asking uncomfortable questions. My policy work will continue to widen. Our news bulletins will return. We will continue following what is happening to dogs internationally and, when something needs exposing, we will expose it. There will be times when the things we publish are upsetting because sometimes it is impossible to tell the truth about what is happening without it being upsetting.

But suffering doesn’t have to occupy every inch of the room.

Our Ankara dogs are part of animal welfare too. So are the dogs receiving treatment through our public facing veterinary work and the dogs being cared for within communities. So is the dog who was frightened last month and is playing today. So is the dog who finally gained weight, the successful treatment, the adoption, the person quietly filling bowls every morning and the completely ridiculous thing one of our dogs did that made everybody laugh.

Those things aren’t frivolous distractions from the serious work. They are the reason for it.

We also need to be careful about allowing social media to teach us what successful animal advocacy looks like. Something receiving thousands of shares doesn’t necessarily mean anything changed for a dog. Some of the most important work can be remarkably uninteresting to an algorithm. A letter to an authority, months spent following a policy, checking evidence before publishing a claim, a conversation that cannot be made public, paying a veterinary bill or quietly helping somebody continue caring for community dogs may achieve far more than the post that generated thousands of angry comments.

Rage is very visible, impact often isn’t.

When Dog Desk Animal Action returns properly on 1 September, there will still be lots of dogs. Our Ankara dogs will still be here, our public facing patients and community work will still be here, the news will be back and the policy work will continue and grow. We aren’t abandoning social media and we aren’t planning to become quieter. We are simply going to use the space a little differently. It will feel gentler.

There will be more room for recovery, progress and ordinary life. More room for people doing good things. More room for dogs who are already safe rather than only dogs who desperately need to be saved. More room for information that doesn’t require somebody to become furious before it deserves their attention, and more room for the things that remind us why we started caring about animals in the first place.

There will also be less room for hostility. Not every provocation requires an answer and not everybody who arrives looking for an argument needs to be given one. Energy spent fighting endlessly on social media is energy that could be spent somewhere considerably more useful.

None of this means looking away from suffering. It means refusing to believe that suffering is the only way to make people care.

We can investigate without becoming consumed by what we investigate. We can challenge without living permanently in a state of outrage. We can expose suffering without turning suffering into content simply because suffering performs well.

We can be serious and still leave room for joy. And perhaps most importantly, we can remember that our job isn’t to make people feel bad enough to prove that they care about dogs. It is to keep them caring long enough to help us change things.

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Dog Desk Animal Action monitors developments affecting street dogs across Türkiye, including municipal collection programmes, shelters and natural living areas. As part of that work, we routinely examine photographs and video circulating online where they appear to document conditions affecting dogs. We also work with people on the ground & intervene where we can.

This week, distressing footage began circulating internationally showing severely emaciated dogs inside a fenced municipal facility. The footage was identified as having been recorded at Boyabat Municipal Shelter in Sinop during summer 2026.

We attempted to verify that attribution. We could not.

No original source accompanied the footage. We could find no contemporary source connecting this particular video to Boyabat or Sinop and no evidence establishing when the short version had actually been recorded.

The conditions visible in the footage are serious. Associating material of this nature with a particular municipality requires evidence capable of supporting the location and date. We therefore continued tracing it.

We have now identified its source context.

The footage can be traced to the documented Bozüyük municipal animal facility in Bilecik Province during the shelter incident that emerged at the end of March 2026.

Correcting the record is important for more than geographical accuracy. Once the footage is returned to its proper context, considerably more can be established about the dogs, the response to the incident, the municipality’s position, subsequent NGO involvement, improvements at the facility and the eventual administrative outcome.

This is the chronology we have been able to establish.

30 March 2026 Conditions at Bozüyük become public

On 30 March, footage from the Bozüyük Municipality Natural Living Area began circulating in Türkiye following a visit by Mert Tuncel of Cennet Bahçesi Yaşam Derneği.

Dogs were shown in extremely poor physical condition. Concerns were raised about feeding, water and conditions within the facility. One of the most disturbing recordings showed dogs consuming the body of another dog.

Reports at the time described the dead dog as having died from starvation. We have not identified evidence of a post mortem establishing starvation as the cause of that individual animal’s death. We therefore distinguish between what the footage establishes and what was alleged at the time.

The Bilecik authorities subsequently opened an investigation into the incident.

Night of 30–31 March The facility is entered

The footage generated an immediate response from animal welfare representatives and members of the public.

Following a complaint to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, an inspection involving the Gendarmerie and lawyer Zeynep Varlık of the Bilecik Bar Association took place at approximately 03:00.

During that intervention, six recently dead dogs and one recently dead cat were reportedly discovered in a closed area.

The discovery of the animals was documented in contemporary reporting. Their individual causes of death were not established by the material we have reviewed and should not be inferred from the wider allegations surrounding the facility.

31 March–3 April Bozüyük Municipality responds

Bozüyük District Governor's Office subsequently issued a written statement announcing that the animals' care and living conditions were being examined by the relevant authorities and that the matter would be investigated.

Mayor Mehmet Talat Bakkalcıoğlu described the incident as distressing but disputed the suggestion that the poor condition of the dogs shown in the footage had originated at the Bozüyük facility.

In his detailed statement on 3 April, he said some dogs had been brought to Bozüyük during the preceding Thursday, Friday and Saturday from the Provincial Special Administration and Pazaryeri district and had arrived in very poor health. He said one animal had died during fighting between dogs and that other severely ill animals had also died.

This was the municipality’s account. We have not independently established the previous location, condition or history of each dog shown in the footage, so it is important to record it as the municipality’s explanation rather than as an independent finding.

The mayor also confirmed that he had ordered an internal municipal investigation and that the Public Prosecutor’s Office was conducting its own investigation. He said action would be taken against anyone found to have been negligent.

1 April The immediate intervention is documented

An account subsequently published by PADER provided further detail about the intervention.

The organisation reported that a team had travelled from Ankara and reached the facility at approximately 03:00. Records were made by the Gendarmerie on the prosecutor’s instructions and the animals were fed the following morning.

Representatives met the mayor and two deputy mayors.

Water containers were cleaned. The cat area was cleaned. Gravel was placed over earth areas. Expired medicines were identified. Problems at the facility and proposed solutions were to be prepared and submitted.

The contemporaneous account also raised an important question about the administrative traceability of the dogs.

According to a published account Bilecik DKMP initially did not allow animals to leave. The advocates reported that the animals were not registered, microchipped or sterilised and that attempts to establish documentation so sick animals could be removed were initially unsuccessful.

They described the situation starkly: the dogs were physically present in the shelter but administratively they effectively did not exist.

For an animal requiring urgent veterinary treatment, that distinction is important. Registration and traceability can determine whether an animal can move through the system and whether its eventual outcome can subsequently be established.

2 April Outside veterinarians arrive and dogs leave for treatment

By 2 April, further intervention was underway.

KOHAYDER reported that Bozüyük Municipality had brought three veterinarians from outside the city to examine the animals.

According to the organisation’s contemporaneous account, animals whose treatment could not be provided at the facility were transferred to HEPAD under a protocol.

KOHAYDER also reported after visiting Bozüyük that the number of dogs at the facility was decreasing and that many of the dogs visible in Mert Tuncel’s original footage were no longer there.

That observation does not establish the individual outcome of those dogs. However, we now have further contemporary evidence concerning some of the animals that left.

HEPAD representatives attended Bozüyük, met officials and assessed conditions at the facility. Contemporary reporting records that ten microchipped and sterilised dogs were taken into HEPAD’s care and transported to an animal hospital for examination.

This gives us a documented treatment pathway for at least some of the dogs removed following the intervention.

10 April Treatment, improvements and continuing NGO involvement

By 10 April, PADER reported that work at the facility was continuing.

A protocol had been signed with an NGO on 3rd April, local animal welfare organisations and volunteers were involved, and many cats and dogs had left the facility for treatment.

This information is important because the record does not end with the distressing footage from the end of March. There was intervention, outside veterinary assistance and work to improve conditions. The available evidence does not establish the full extent or permanence of those improvements, but they form part of the documented history and should be recorded alongside the failures that preceded them.

31 July An official administrative finding

The case subsequently produced an official administrative outcome.

On 31 July, the Turkish Presidency’s CİMER outcomes service published the result of a complaint concerning the Bozüyük animal-care facility.

According to the published outcome, an official examination determined that those responsible at the facility had committed prohibited conduct under Article 14(a) of Animal Protection Law No. 5199, which includes leaving animals hungry or thirsty, neglecting their care and causing physical or psychological suffering.

The published outcome states that an administrative fine was imposed on Bozüyük Municipality for each dog.

This later finding does not erase the municipality’s explanation given in April. Both belong in the record: the municipality’s account and the subsequent official administrative finding.

The footage resurfaces in August

Almost five months later, a short extract from the Bozüyük footage began circulating internationally under a different description:

Boyabat Municipal Shelter, Sinop Summer 2026.

There was no original source attached to the short clip, no filming date and no explanation of how Boyabat had been established as the location. We searched for evidence supporting that attribution and found none. Instead, we traced the clip back to the longer Bozüyük material described above.

We cannot establish the precise moment at which those particular seconds were recorded because the original camera file and its metadata are not available. We can establish that the footage was circulating in connection with the documented Bozüyük shelter case at the end of March and beginning of April 2026.

On the evidence available to us, the subsequent attribution to Boyabat, Sinop, in summer 2026 is incorrect.

That does not mean there have been no animal welfare concerns in Boyabat or elsewhere in Sinop Province. There have been, and we will examine those separately using Sinop’s own evidence.

Why accuracy is important

A municipality should not be associated with serious animal welfare allegations on the basis of incorrectly attributed footage. Equally, the place where an incident actually occurred should not disappear from the record when footage becomes detached from its original context.

There is another consequence when that happens. The subsequent history of the dogs can disappear too.

In Bozüyük, the story continued after the original footage. Animals received treatment, outside veterinarians and animal welfare organisations became involved, work was undertaken at the facility and the case eventually resulted in an official administrative finding.

We still cannot complete one part of that history. We do not know what happened to the severely emaciated cream-coloured dog who appears prominently in the first half of the video .

So that remains an open question and we will keep looking.

We chase facts that can be proven, and we follow paths that help the dogs. Sometimes that means documenting improvements as carefully as failures. Sometimes it means correcting information that has already travelled widely. And sometimes it means being prepared to say that something remains unknown.

Accuracy is not an obstacle to animal advocacy. It is what allows us to move beyond awareness, follow what happened next and look for outcomes that actually matter to the dogs.

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The investigation into Miranda’s Rescue in Humboldt County, California has taken another significant turn, this time involving the California Attorney General and the animals reportedly still remaining at the rescue.

A formal complaint has been filed with the Attorney General’s Office asking the state to intervene. Whistleblower Jennifer Raymond is reportedly asking for approximately 40 animals still at Miranda’s Rescue to be removed, for a receiver to be appointed to protect them and ultimately for the organisation itself to be dissolved.

Those are substantial requests and, importantly, they are requests. The filing of a complaint does not mean the Attorney General has accepted the allegations within it or decided to take the action being sought. As we have throughout this investigation, we need to keep that distinction very clear.

But the complaint raises another question that has become increasingly difficult to ignore as this case develops. What happens to the animals who are still there while everybody works out which authority is responsible for what?

We have spent the past few weeks trying to understand the regulatory structure surrounding independent animal rescues in California. We contacted the California Department of Food and Agriculture and were told directly that CDFA does not regulate companion animals such as dogs and cats. We subsequently contacted California’s Registry of Charities and Fundraisers to ask whether its supervision of charitable organisations extends to the welfare and animal records of rescue organisations and, if it does not, which authority actually carries that responsibility.

That question has become particularly interesting because California is now considering something that does not currently exist in the form being proposed. Plans for a Bureau of Companion Animal Welfare have been formally presented at the State Capitol, with licensing, inspections, complaint investigation and data collection among the measures being discussed.

Those proposals are about what California might do in the future. The complaint filed with the Attorney General is about what can be done now.

Humboldt County has already taken action through the powers available to it. Miranda’s Rescue’s conditional use permit has been suspended and the organisation cannot currently accept new animals or adopt animals out under that permit. The county’s action concerns the conditions under which the property was authorised to operate as a rescue, but suspending a land use permit and determining what should happen to animals already living at the property are not necessarily the same thing.

According to reporting surrounding the new complaint, approximately 40 animals are believed to remain at Miranda’s Rescue. The complainant is asking the Attorney General to seek their removal and the appointment of a receiver who could take responsibility for protecting them. She is also asking for the organisation ultimately to be dissolved.

Whether the Attorney General has grounds to take any of those steps will be for the state to determine. There are allegations within the complaint concerning animal cruelty and financial misconduct which should remain allegations unless and until they are established through the appropriate process.

The criminal investigation also remains active. At the time of writing we have seen no announcement that Shannon Miranda has been criminally charged in connection with the investigation. That is important context because the sheer scale and disturbing nature of what investigators have recovered from the property must not cause us to jump ahead of the legal process.

At the same time, the existence of an ongoing criminal investigation does not make the welfare of animals currently at a property irrelevant. That is where this latest development becomes particularly important.

Law enforcement investigates suspected crimes. Planning authorities enforce land use requirements. Charity regulators oversee charitable organisations. Animal control authorities have their own functions. Each may hold one piece of the picture, but an animal cannot be divided between regulatory jurisdictions. The dog standing in front of you simply needs somebody to be responsible for making sure they are safe.

This is precisely the fragmentation we have been trying to understand.

The Miranda’s Rescue investigation has already resulted in the recovery of 117 intact canine remains, 21 canine skulls and hundreds of additional bones. Investigators have been tracing the histories of dogs that entered the organisation, and some dogs transferred there by other rescues have reportedly been identified among the dead. Against that background, questions about the animals reportedly remaining at the property are inevitably going to be asked.

That does not mean their removal is automatically the correct answer. Moving animals carries welfare implications too. Their health, behaviour, individual needs, available placements and continuity of care all matter. Any intervention should be based upon proper welfare assessment rather than the understandable public desire to simply get every animal out as quickly as possible.

But somebody needs to be making that assessment. And somebody needs to be accountable for it.

The request for a receiver is particularly interesting because it attempts to bridge the gap between investigating what may have happened in the past and protecting the animals that remain in the present. Rather than waiting for every criminal, planning, regulatory and civil question surrounding Miranda’s Rescue to be resolved, the complaint is asking whether somebody independent should take responsibility for the animals now. We support that view but whether California’s Attorney General agrees remains to be seen.

We have already asked California’s charity regulator what responsibility it has for animal welfare operations within charitable rescues. The complaint is now effectively testing that question in real time by asking the Attorney General’s Office to use its authority over a charitable organisation to intervene. Its response could therefore tell us a great deal about where the boundaries of California’s existing system actually sit.

If the Attorney General can intervene, we need to understand under what circumstances and through which powers. If the Attorney General cannot intervene in the welfare and custody of the animals, the next question is obvious: who can?

These are not academic questions anymore. There are reportedly animals still at Miranda’s Rescue while a criminal investigation continues, the county has suspended the organisation’s conditional use permit, civil proceedings have begun, hundreds of dogs that previously entered the rescue have had to be traced and California is simultaneously discussing the creation of an entirely new companion animal regulatory system. The system is being tested from almost every direction.

We will be watching what the Attorney General does with this complaint very carefully. Jennifer Raymond has asked California to intervene. California has not, simply by receiving that complaint, agreed that the intervention requested is necessary or legally justified.

What happens next may nevertheless answer one of the questions we have been asking since we began looking closely at this case. When serious concerns surround an animal rescue and animals are still inside, who has both the responsibility and the power to protect them while the investigation continues?

For the animals reportedly still at Miranda’s Rescue, that question needs an answer right now.

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Today is International Dog Day and we could fill this page with photographs of the dogs we love and tell you why they matter to us, but if you have followed Dog Desk Animal Action for any length of time you already know that. Instead, I thought today was a good opportunity to talk about something we rarely stop to explain. How we actually work for dogs in Türkiye.

What you see on social media is only a tiny part of it. You see the investigations, the dogs, the municipal announcements, the figures we question and the developments we believe people outside Türkiye need to know about. What you don’t necessarily see is everything happening behind those posts.

Dog Desk Animal Action operates within Türkiye. We are not simply watching the country from a desk in Britain and commenting on what happens there. We have dogs in our care, we work with veterinary professionals and carefully selected advocates and, where possible, we speak directly to mayors and municipalities. We have relationships on the ground right across the board from the top down and that shapes how we work, what we publish and sometimes what we decide not to publish.

There are animal welfare accounts which are very loud about what is happening in Türkiye and that is important. Awareness raising is so important. Without people documenting events, sharing footage and keeping street dogs visible, many things would never reach an international audience. But that information needs to be correct & sadly that is not always the case. We expose what is happening too but what we expose it double checked for accuracy & backed up with evidence and over time we have built a substantial evidence based record of developments affecting Türkiye’s street dogs for people outside the country trying to understand what is happening.

But we have one very simple rule. If we cannot evidence something, we do not publish it as fact.

We receive information, photographs, videos, documents, messages and allegations. Some of it is extremely distressing and some of it would travel very quickly on social media & garner a lot of attention for our organisation, but that does not automatically make it something we can publish. We are not interested in followers at any cost & we are not monetised. We check sources, look for original documents, follow municipal and government statements, examine legislation, compare figures and retain evidence. Sometimes that takes time and sometimes it means we don’t publish something at all.

We are also very careful with our words. There are animal welfare matters before the courts in Türkiye and the last thing we want to do is use language which could prejudice proceedings. We also have to tread carefully around Türkiye’s laws relating to insult when writing about public officials and institutions. None of this prevents us from asking difficult questions or publishing uncomfortable information, but it does mean we need to be able to stand behind what we say.

Most importantly, nothing we publish should make things worse for a dog or for the person trying to protect that dog.

The person who gives us information from inside Türkiye still has to live there after everybody else has stopped sharing the story. An advocate may still have to deal with the municipality involved. A person caring for dogs may depend upon relationships within their community to keep those animals safe. There are times when we know more than we publish and there are times when protecting a person, a relationship or a group of dogs is more important than having a story on our socials.

That isn’t silence. It is part of working responsibly in a country where the consequences of what we say are not experienced by us alone.

There is another misconception social media can create about our work. People see what we publish and understandably assume that publication is the work. It isn’t.

We know posts can reach a million people and create enormous awareness without changing what happens to a single dog the following morning. Awareness is important and public pressure can be extremely powerful, but it rarely produces an immediate practical result on its own. Sometimes the thing most likely to change what happens to dogs is a conversation nobody else will ever see.

We speak directly to mayors and municipalities. Not all of them want to engage with us and not every conversation leads anywhere, but some respond very favourably. When somebody who has the authority to influence what happens to dogs in their municipality is willing to talk to us, we talk to them.

Those conversations give us an opportunity to raise concerns, ask questions, understand what is happening locally and sometimes work towards something better. Those conversations are confidential and we do not publish them. The relationships depend upon trust and we take that seriously. What matters is whether that dialogue can improve outcomes for dogs, not whether it can become content for social media. Sometimes advocacy means applying public pressure and sometimes it means being able to speak directly to the people making decisions. Part of our job is understanding which approach is most likely to help the dogs.

The advocates we work with are carefully selected and that is important too. A large social media following does not automatically make somebody the right person for us to work with. We need people we can trust, people who understand their local area and the dogs within it, people who understand the difference between something they know and something they have heard and people who understand why sometimes publicity helps and sometimes it makes things considerably more difficult.

Local knowledge matters. Veterinary relationships matter. Community relationships matter and, where they can be established constructively, relationships with municipalities matter too. Animal welfare can sometimes be presented as though everybody fits neatly into groups of good people and bad people, but working on the ground is rarely that simple. If somebody responsible for dogs is willing to try to make something better, our priority is to see whether that willingness can be turned into something useful for the animals.

Alongside all of this are the dogs we work with directly. Some are in our care, including dogs who need shelter, veterinary treatment, rehabilitation or a route towards adoption, but much of our work also happens within communities. Not every dog needs to be removed from the place it knows in order to be helped. We work with dogs where they are, supporting veterinary care, sterilisation and other interventions that can improve their welfare while allowing them, where it is safe and appropriate, to remain within their community carers in their homes. This means our work can reach far beyond the number of dogs physically in our care at any one time. The approach depends on the individual dog and the circumstances around them, but the aim is the same: to find the intervention that gives that dog the best possible outcome.

Those dogs are also a constant reminder of why the wider work matters. Words such as collection, shelter capacity, population control and stray dog management sound administrative when they appear in legislation or municipal announcements. For an individual dog they describe decisions made by human beings which can determine the rest of its life.

Years of working in Türkiye have taught us that there is no single form of advocacy capable of protecting dogs. Exposure isn’t enough on its own. Neither is rescue. Neither is talking to municipalities, sterilisation, legislation or social media. They are tools and different situations require different ones.

Sometimes we expose what is happening. Sometimes we investigate. Sometimes we challenge. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes we work quietly with people on the ground. Sometimes we provide veterinary care. Sometimes we give a dog somewhere safe to live. Sometimes we ask a mayor to listen and sometimes we publish something we know will make people uncomfortable. There are also times when we hold information back because publishing it would achieve very little while potentially making life more difficult for the dogs or the people protecting them. And actually for us too.

The question behind all of those decisions is the same. What gives the dogs the best chance of a better outcome?

Our Global Stray Dog Crisis Map was born, in many ways, from the lessons Türkiye taught us. Working there showed us how quickly national policy can change the lives of enormous numbers of dogs and how important it is to look beyond announcements and ask what happens afterwards.

Where did the dogs go? Who is recording them? What happens inside the shelters? How many were sterilised? How many were adopted? How many died? Who is checking and where is the data?

Eventually we started asking those questions beyond Türkiye and began seeing some of the same patterns elsewhere. Mass collection, expanding shelter systems, disputed population figures, inadequate sterilisation capacity, killing policies and missing outcome data were not issues confined to one country. That became the foundation of the Global Stray Dog Crisis Map and the international policy work which has grown around it.

Türkiye taught us to look beyond what we are told is happening and ask what actually happened to the dogs.

So on International Dog Day we wanted to tell you a little more of the work behind what you see on your timeline. We are not trying to be the loudest voice in the room & we are not trying to have the most social media followers or to go viral. We are trying to understand when we need to speak loudly, when we need to investigate, when we need to challenge, when we need to sit around a table, when somebody needs protecting and when we need to get on with helping the dog standing in front of us.

Most of that will never fit into a social media post. But that is how we work in Türkiye. And every part of it is for the dogs.

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Kerala has introduced a new Standard Operating Procedure governing the euthanasia of street dogs considered aggressive or seriously diseased. The Government Order, G.O.(Ms) No.116/2026/LSGD, was issued by the Local Self Government Department on 22 August 2026.

There is an important distinction to make at the outset. This is not a policy authorising indiscriminate killing of street dogs, and it should not be reported as one. Humane euthanasia can be necessary where a dog is suffering from an incurable condition or catastrophic injury, and rabies presents an obvious and serious public-health concern. The new procedure also contains safeguards intended to prevent arbitrary killing.

The difficult part lies elsewhere. What happens when the reason for killing a dog is its behaviour?

Under the new procedure, dogs falling within categories including incurable disease, mortal injury, rabies and dangerous or aggressive behaviour may be considered for euthanasia. Local Stray Dog Management Committees are expected to make written recommendations and veterinary professionals are responsible for carrying out euthanasia using prescribed methods.

On paper, introducing a formal decision making process is preferable to dogs being poisoned, shot or killed without records. Kerala’s earlier work on the SOP was itself prompted by concerns about uncertainty and arbitrary euthanasia, with the Animal Husbandry Department seeking clearer criteria for determining when a dog could properly be regarded as aggressive.

But creating a procedure does not remove the central difficulty. Aggression is not a simple label.

A dog can bite because it is frightened. A mother can defend her puppies. A dog being cornered or captured may react defensively. Territorial behaviour can include barking and chasing. Pain can alter behaviour. A frightened street dog surrounded by unfamiliar people may behave very differently from the same animal in ordinary circumstances.

None of those possibilities means genuinely dangerous dogs do not exist. The question is how authorities distinguish between them.

A dog that has repeatedly carried out serious, unprovoked attacks presents a very different situation from a dog accused of chasing somebody down a road. Yet once both can potentially sit beneath a broad description such as aggressive, violent or ferocious, the quality of the assessment becomes critical.

That is why Dog Desk Animal Action has written to Kerala’s Local Self Government Department. We have asked for the complete official English language version of G.O.(Ms) No.116/2026/LSGD and its accompanying SOP. The Government Order can be identified through Kerala’s official records, but we have not been able to locate a complete official English language version publicly available to allow the detailed provisions to be examined directly.

More importantly, we have asked what evidence will actually be required before an individual dog can be condemned on behavioural grounds. Can a complaint be enough? Can an allegation that a dog attempted to attack somebody be enough? Does chasing qualify? Must the circumstances surrounding an incident be investigated? Is an individual behavioural assessment required from a qualified veterinary professional? How are fear, pain, maternal behaviour, territorial behaviour and reactions during capture distinguished from a dog presenting a persistent and serious danger?

These are not minor procedural questions. They could determine whether the behavioural category remains a narrow provision for genuinely dangerous animals or gradually becomes a much wider route through which unwanted street dogs can be removed.

There are elements of Kerala’s approach that deserve recognition. Individual euthanasia records are reportedly required. Information including the dog’s identification, capture location, photograph or identification tag and the reason for euthanasia is expected to be recorded. That creates something Dog Desk Animal Action repeatedly looks for when examining street dog management systems: individual traceability.

If a dog is killed by a public authority, there should be a record showing which dog it was and why the decision was taken. But the existence of a register is only the beginning. The next question is whether anybody outside the authority will be able to see what it contains. We have therefore asked whether Kerala will publish euthanasia information at local authority or district level and, crucially, whether the reason for euthanasia will be recorded in the published figures.

A single total would tell us very little. If 1,000 dogs were euthanised, it would matter enormously whether 900 were suffering from confirmed rabies or catastrophic injuries and 100 were assessed as dangerously aggressive, or whether the proportions were reversed.

The categories need to remain visible.

There is another safeguard within the new procedure that deserves close attention. Reporting indicates that dogs selected for euthanasia are to spend a short period in an isolation kennel, ABC facility or shelter, during which recognised animal welfare organisations or interested individuals may be able to take them into care.

In principle, that creates an opportunity to save a dog where appropriate. In practice, a period of only a few days could be extremely difficult to use. An organisation may need to discover that the dog has been listed, assess the circumstances, locate appropriate accommodation, arrange transport and take responsibility for an animal already classified by authorities as dangerous.

That is why we have asked how notification will work, how long organisations will actually have to intervene and whether taking a dog into approved care cancels the euthanasia decision.

The procedure also reportedly provides protection for officials carrying out their duties. That needs to be understood accurately. Protection for officials acting lawfully and in good faith is not the same thing as immunity from accountability where procedures are ignored or authority is abused.

The important question is therefore what happens when somebody believes the safeguards have failed.

If the wrong dog is captured, if an assessment is inadequate, if the required evidence does not exist or if somebody alleges that a dog has been killed outside the permitted procedure, there must be a meaningful route through which that decision can be examined.

We have asked Kerala what that route is. None of these questions requires opposition to humane euthanasia. A dog dying painfully from an incurable condition should not be kept alive simply to improve a statistic. A dog with confirmed rabies presents an entirely different welfare and public health situation from a healthy community dog. There may also be exceptional cases in which careful professional assessment concludes that an individual dog’s behaviour presents a serious danger that cannot safely be managed.

The danger comes when exceptional circumstances become elastic categories.

India is already going through a profound change in the way street dogs are managed. Courts, states and municipalities are trying to reconcile human safety, rabies prevention, sterilisation, vaccination, institutional removals, shelter capacity and animal welfare law. Decisions being made now could shape the treatment of enormous numbers of dogs for years.

Kerala has chosen to create a formal process rather than leave euthanasia decisions without structure. That gives the state an opportunity to demonstrate that such decisions can be individually evidenced, professionally assessed, recorded and scrutinised. It also gives the public something against which implementation can be measured.

The most important figures will therefore come after the policy begins operating. How many dogs are euthanised? Where were they collected? Why were they killed? How many were classified as aggressive? How many were suffering from rabies or incurable disease? How many proposed euthanasia cases were instead taken into care? How many decisions were challenged? How consistently were the safeguards followed? Those figures will tell us considerably more than the existence of the SOP itself.

For now, one question sits at the centre of Kerala’s new approach. When the state decides that a street dog is too dangerous to live, what evidence will it require before making that decision?

Dog Desk Animal Action has asked Kerala’s Local Self Government Department. We will publish its response.

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The Philippines has been on the Dog Desk Animal Action Global Stray Dog Crisis Map Watchlist because of growing concerns about the way free roaming dogs are being managed. We have been watching municipal collection operations, impoundment, the fate of dogs once they enter pounds and the balance between lethal control and programmes designed to prevent populations from growing in the first place.

In Davao City, dog catching operations took place on 17 and 18 August across several barangays in Talomo, Buhangin and Tugbok districts. Dogs collected during those operations entered a system that gave owners a short opportunity to reclaim them, followed by a limited period in which the animals could be adopted. Those remaining unclaimed and unadopted were scheduled for euthanasia on 25 and 26 August.

We are no longer looking at dogs being removed from streets because of complaints, rabies concerns or public safety. We are looking at a municipal process in which collection can begin a countdown towards death.

Davao is not the only place where dogs are being collected. In Santa Maria, Bulacan, dogs were recently rounded up from a subdivision in Barangay Caysio following complaints about roaming animals and taken to a municipal pound. Appeals subsequently went out seeking adopters and rescuers because of concerns that dogs remaining there could face euthanasia.

Dog catching activity has also continued elsewhere, including a rabies control operation in Mambajao, Camiguin on 22 August. We do not currently have sufficient evidence to establish the outcomes for those dogs, and it would be wrong to assume that collection automatically means euthanasia. But that uncertainty illustrates precisely why we are watching the Philippines so closely.

There is nothing inherently wrong with authorities intervening where free roaming dogs present genuine welfare, public health or safety concerns. Rabies remains a serious issue and governments have responsibilities both to their citizens and to animals. We want to know what happens after the truck leaves.

If dogs are collected, there should be transparent records showing how many entered the system, how many were reclaimed, how many were adopted or transferred, how many remained in care and how many were euthanised. Without those figures, it becomes extremely difficult to understand the real consequences of municipal dog-catching programmes. This becomes even more important when holding periods are short.

A dog may have been owned and become lost. A community dog may have people feeding and monitoring it without anyone formally recognised as its owner. A frightened animal entering a pound may need time before it is suitable for adoption. Rescue organisations also need time to find foster homes, transport and space. When the period between collection and potential euthanasia is measured in days, those opportunities become very small.

There is another side to the Philippine picture and it is important that we acknowledge it. Municipalities are also investing in sterilisation and rabies vaccination. Quezon City, for example, provides free anti rabies vaccination and spay/neuter services and has developed rehabilitation and adoption initiatives alongside its animal-control work.

But the scale of municipal custody is significant. Quezon City reports that more than 42,000 stray or abandoned animals were taken into custody between 2023 and June 2026. Numbers of that size make outcome transparency essential. Knowing how many animals were collected tells us how busy an animal control system was. It does not tell us whether that system protected them.

That distinction sits at the heart of our Global Stray Dog Crisis Map. We do not move countries into Crisis just because they have street dogs. We look at what governments are doing in response to them. Mass removal, lethal population control, prolonged confinement, inadequate shelter capacity, weak traceability and policies that expose large numbers of dogs to poor welfare outcomes are all significant.

Repeated municipal collection operations combined with short holding periods and the potential euthanasia of dogs that are not reclaimed or adopted create a pattern we cannot treat as routine animal control. If collection continues at scale while dogs entering pounds face lethal outcomes within days, the case for changing the Philippines’ classification will become increasingly difficult to resist.

What we need now is outcome data. How many dogs were collected in Davao during the August operations? How many went home? How many were adopted? How many were transferred for rehabilitation? How many were euthanised on 25 and 26 August? And the same questions should be capable of being answered across every municipality operating a dog pound.

The Philippines still has an opportunity to move in the other direction. Investment in large scale sterilisation, sustained rabies vaccination, identification, responsible ownership and adoption could reduce the number of dogs entering municipal custody in the first place. But prevention has to operate at sufficient scale to change what is happening on the streets.

For now, the Philippines remains on the Dog Desk Animal Action Global Stray Dog Crisis Map Watchlist. We are watching what happens next very closely. Because when dogs can move from the street to a municipal pound and towards euthanasia within a matter of days, the distance between Watchlist and Crisis is becoming uncomfortably small.

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California now has a proposal in front of it that could fundamentally change the way animal rescues, shelters and other companion animal organisations are overseen across the state.

On 24 August, supporters of a proposed Bureau of Companion Animal Welfare formally launched their plans at the California State Capitol in Sacramento. We knew this proposal was coming and wrote about the growing calls for a dedicated companion animal regulator following the investigation into Miranda’s Rescue. What we did not have then was enough detail to begin considering what that regulator might actually look like.

Now we do.

The proposal would create a Bureau of Companion Animal Welfare within the California Department of Food and Agriculture, introducing a statewide system of registration or licensing, inspections, complaint investigation and data collection relating to animal care, transfers and outcomes.

That last word immediately caught our attention. Outcomes.

For weeks we have been asking what happens to a dog after they are transferred from one organisation to another. Who records where that dog went, who checks what subsequently happened to them and who notices when the number of dogs entering an organisation cannot be reconciled with the number leaving through adoption, transfer, death or euthanasia?

Those questions became impossible to ignore as the investigation into Miranda’s Rescue developed.

Investigators in Humboldt County have been faced with the enormous task of reconstructing the histories of dogs that entered the organisation, tracing microchips, contacting shelters and rescues and attempting to establish what happened to individual animals. Canine remains have been recovered from the property and dogs transferred there by other rescue organisations have reportedly been identified among the dead.

We have repeatedly said that this should not become an opportunity to attack the organisations that entrusted their dogs to Miranda’s Rescue believing they were sending them somewhere safe. Rescue depends upon organisations being able to work together. What it should make us examine is whether the system surrounding those relationships provides enough protection when trust fails.

The proposed Bureau appears, at least in part, to be trying to answer that question.

It is important to correct one impression that could easily arise from the timing. The organisations behind the proposal say the Bureau was not conceived because of Miranda’s Rescue. Work on the model reportedly began around three years ago. The Miranda’s investigation has, however, brought extraordinary attention to precisely the kind of gaps its supporters say the Bureau is intended to address.

This is not simply emergency regulation being invented in response to one shocking case. There has already been work underway considering whether California’s existing approach to companion animal oversight is sufficient.

The involvement of Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal is particularly interesting. His position goes to the heart of the distinction between investigation and prevention. Law enforcement can investigate suspected crimes when evidence emerges, but by that stage animals may already have suffered. A system involving routine licensing, reporting and inspections potentially creates an opportunity to recognise warning signs earlier.

That is exactly where regulation can be valuable. But we remain cautious about assuming that creating a regulator automatically creates better animal welfare.

Under the proposal, the new Bureau would not replace local animal control agencies, police departments, sheriffs, prosecutors or public health authorities. Instead, it would add a statewide layer of oversight capable of collecting information across organisations and potentially identifying patterns that individual local authorities cannot see.

There are also attempts within the proposal to address some of the concerns that immediately arise when additional regulation is discussed. Fees would reportedly be tiered and limited to the reasonable costs of regulation, organisations would generally be given notice and an opportunity to correct violations, appeal and due process mechanisms are envisaged and an advisory committee would include representatives from rescues, shelters, veterinary medicine, boarding establishments, local government, animal welfare organisations and the public.

Implementation could also be phased, with licensing potentially becoming mandatory by 1 January 2030. Supporters hope legislation could be introduced in 2027, although at this stage the proposal does not yet have a legislator committed to carrying it forward. So there is a long way to go. And that gives California an opportunity to get this right.

Regulation introduced following an animal welfare scandal can very easily become regulation designed to demonstrate that action has been taken. Rules are written, licences introduced, inspections counted and forms collected, but none of those things necessarily tells us whether animals became safer.

The proposed Bureau needs to be judged differently. If it collects outcome data, what happens when those outcomes don’t add up? If a rescue receives hundreds of dogs but records comparatively few adoptions or transfers, does the system flag that? If mortality suddenly increases, does somebody notice? If dogs move repeatedly between organisations, does their history remain attached to them? If complaints are received by different local authorities about the same organisation, can a statewide system connect them?

Those are the questions that determine whether data collection becomes animal protection rather than administration.

There also needs to be considerable thought given to the organisations being regulated. California has large shelters and substantial rescue organisations, but it also has small rescues and foster networks working with limited money and manpower. A system so administratively demanding that responsible organisations reduce capacity or close could ultimately harm the very animals it was created to protect. This is something that always worries me with regulation.

That doesn’t mean small organisations should be exempt from accountability. A dog deserves protection whether they enter an organisation caring for ten animals or ten thousand. It means requirements should be proportionate, practical and designed around information that genuinely contributes to animal welfare.

The proposed advisory structure may therefore prove extremely important. The people writing and implementing these rules need to understand what happens on the ground when a frightened dog is collected, when an emergency transfer has to be arranged, when a foster placement suddenly collapses or when a small organisation takes an animal because nobody else has space. Good regulation has to survive contact with the real world.

There is another interesting element to all of this for Dog Desk Animal Action. Earlier this month we contacted the California Department of Food and Agriculture while trying to establish who currently regulates the welfare and traceability of dogs moving through independent rescues. CDFA told us directly that it “does not regulate companion animal species, such as dogs and cats.”

The proposed Bureau of Companion Animal Welfare would now potentially sit inside that very department. That alone demonstrates the scale of the change being contemplated. California would be creating a function within CDFA that does not currently exist in the form being proposed.

We have also contacted California’s Registry of Charities and Fundraisers asking where responsibility currently sits for routinely monitoring the intake and subsequent outcomes of animals held by independent rescues. We are still interested in that answer because understanding the gaps in the existing system is essential before deciding whether the proposed system fills them.

The Miranda’s Rescue investigation remains active and the allegations surrounding what happened there will continue through the appropriate investigative and legal processes. The proposed Bureau should not be treated as a verdict on those proceedings, nor should one case alone determine how thousands of legitimate organisations across California are regulated.

But Miranda’s Rescue has forced an uncomfortable question into public view. When hundreds of dogs move through an organisation, should somebody outside that organisation be capable of seeing whether those dogs have corresponding outcomes? We believe the answer is yes.

Whether the proposed Bureau of Companion Animal Welfare is the right mechanism for achieving that remains to be seen. There is not yet legislation to examine line by line and there will inevitably be debate about cost, proportionality, enforcement, inspection powers and the burden placed upon legitimate organisations.

We will follow that process rather than automatically supporting regulation simply because it carries the words animal welfare.

If California creates a new regulator, its success should not ultimately be measured by how many organisations it licenses, how many inspections it completes or how much data it collects. Those figures tell us what the regulator did. They do not tell us what happened to the animals. The measure has to remain the dogs. Can they be accounted for? Are warning signs identified earlier? Are good organisations able to continue rescuing them? And when something begins to go badly wrong, does somebody notice before investigators are left trying to discover what happened after the dogs are gone?

If California can build a system capable of doing that, then this proposal could become something considerably more important than another regulator.

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A dog in Kazakhstan no longer has to be incurably ill or proven dangerous before the state can lawfully end their life. Under legislation now in force, dogs may be euthanised as part of a policy to regulate the number of stray animals.

That distinction is fundamental. Illness may be assessed. Dangerous behaviour may be investigated. Suffering may justify a carefully considered veterinary decision. Population control is something different. It allows the existence of too many dogs to become the reason individual dogs die.

Kazakhstan’s Law No. 292‑VIII, signed by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on 19 May 2026, amended the country’s legislation on the responsible treatment of animals. Most of its provisions came into force 60 days after the law’s first official publication, with the new euthanasia framework reported as operative from 20 July 2026.

The amendment adds a new ground for euthanasia when regulating the number of stray animals. Cats are specifically excluded from this provision. In practice, it is therefore a law directed principally at dogs.

The legislation also allows the euthanasia of unclaimed dogs held in shelters or temporary detention facilities after the relevant holding period has expired. Reporting on the enacted framework describes a minimum holding period of five days for dogs classified as stray, although local representative bodies may extend it. Animals considered likely to have an owner may be held for up to 60 days.

Five days is not a meaningful rescue system. It is a countdown. Within that period, a dog has to be captured, transported, admitted, recorded, assessed and made visible to anyone who might recognise, reclaim or adopt them. That assumes the facility publishes intake records promptly. It assumes photographs are taken. It assumes the public can search an accessible database. It assumes families know where to look. It assumes rescues are notified and permitted to intervene. It assumes the dog survives capture and confinement long enough to be found.

The law does not itself guarantee that any of those safeguards will exist in practice. It transfers enormous responsibility to local authorities, which may establish the procedures and time limits governing capture, temporary detention and killing. That means a dog’s chance of survival may depend heavily upon the region in which they are collected, the capacity of the local facility and the rules adopted by the relevant council.

The legislation contains provisions that appear positive when read in isolation. Dogs and cats are to be microchipped. Authorities are expected to support shelter information campaigns, promote adoption and help locate the owners of lost animals. The law formally recognises animals as sentient beings capable of experiencing pain and physical suffering. It also states that cruelty and the unjustified deprivation of animal life are unacceptable.

Yet those principles now sit beside an express power to kill dogs in order to regulate their numbers. Calling this euthanasia does not resolve that contradiction. Euthanasia traditionally describes the ending of an animal’s life to prevent unavoidable suffering. Killing a healthy dog because the holding period has expired, the shelter has no space or the municipality wants fewer dogs is not the same decision. It is administrative killing carried out under a legally authorised population management system.

This also raises an immediate question about classification. How will officials determine that a captured dog is genuinely stray?

A dog without a microchip is not necessarily ownerless. They may be lost, abandoned shortly before capture or cared for by a community without being formally registered. Existing dogs cannot retroactively acquire the records the state failed to establish for them. A mandatory microchipping system may improve future accountability, but during the transition it could also be used to divide dogs into those recognised by the system and those treated as disposable because no record can be found.

The method of capture matters too. Dogs may be frightened, injured, defensive or distressed when they are restrained and transported. Behaviour observed during a forceful capture or inside an unfamiliar holding facility cannot automatically be treated as proof of persistent, unprovoked aggression. Without independent behavioural standards, veterinary oversight and a right to review decisions, labels can become a rapid route from the street to death.

The public also needs to know what happens after collection. Every dog should have an individual record showing where and when they were found, their photograph and description, microchip check, health assessment, behaviour assessment, vaccination status and current location. The record should show whether the dog was reclaimed, adopted, transferred, remained in care, died or was euthanised. Where euthanasia occurs, the legal and veterinary justification must be recorded and published.

Aggregate claims that thousands of dogs were handled or managed are not enough. Capture is not an outcome. Admission to a shelter is not proof of protection. A policy cannot be called successful while the public is denied the information needed to establish how many dogs left the system alive.

There must also be financial transparency. Municipal contracts for capture, transport, confinement, veterinary treatment, euthanasia and disposal should be publicly accessible. If contractors are paid per dog collected, held or killed, the safeguards against unnecessary capture and premature death must be stronger, not weaker. No organisation should benefit financially from an outcome it can influence without independent oversight.

Kazakhstan previously presented sterilisation, vaccination and return as its national approach. The government has now moved towards a non return system in which euthanasia is available as a population control mechanism. This is not a minor procedural amendment. It changes the legal destination of dogs collected from the streets.

Dog Desk Animal Action has placed Kazakhstan within the Crisis category on the Global Stray Dog Crisis Map. The new law reinforces that assessment.

The immediate test will be found in implementation. Local rules, holding periods, municipal contracts, shelter capacity, adoption activity and euthanasia figures must now be monitored closely. Authorities should publish individual outcome records and provide enough time for owners, carers and legitimate animal welfare organisations to locate and protect captured dogs.

The number of dogs on the streets may be a public policy challenge. It is a challenge created by abandonment, uncontrolled breeding, weak registration, insufficient sterilisation and years of inadequate prevention.

The dogs did not create those failures. They should not be sentenced to death because the state has finally decided to count them.

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Kazakhstan Law No 292 Viii English Translation

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Mersin Metropolitan Municipality has published plenty of numbers about its work with stray animals since Türkiye’s amended animal protection law came into force. Thousands of dogs have been sterilised, thousands have been adopted and substantial new capacity has been created to accommodate animals. On the surface there is a considerable amount of information available. Look a little more closely, however, and one important part of the picture is still missing. We do not know how many dogs entered the system or what happened to all of those that did not leave through adoption.

Since 2 August 2024, Mersin says 8,111 dogs have been sterilised and 2,425 dogs have been adopted. Those are significant figures and the adoptions in particular represent a clear & welcome outcome. More than two thousand dogs have left municipal care for homes. What we cannot do is subtract the adoption figure from the sterilisation figure and assume that the remainder are still being held. Some dogs may already have been sterilised when they arrived, the two figures may represent different groups of animals and there may be other movements through the system that are not visible in the published totals.

The figures for cats illustrate the difference particularly well. Mersin reports that 10,863 cats were sterilised and 9,037 were returned to their communities. There is an identifiable route through the system. Cats were treated and thousands subsequently left municipal care through return. For dogs that route has changed. Türkiye’s amended law ended the previous model under which sterilised dogs could routinely be returned to the places from which they had been collected. Dogs removed from the streets are now expected to remain within shelters and designated so called natural living areas unless they are adopted.

Mersin has been building the infrastructure to accommodate that change. At Kaşlı, the municipality reports capacity for 2,000 animals within the care centre and another 5,000 within the natural living area. Patiköy was created as part of this new approach, providing a larger environment where dogs can be housed and made available for adoption. Mersin describes investment in feeding and watering systems, cooling pools and provision for elderly and disabled animals. These details help us understand what has been built and how the municipality says the animals are being cared for. What they still do not tell us is how many dogs are actually there.

That becomes increasingly important when dogs can no longer leave the system through return. Every dog collected must have another outcome. Some will be adopted. Some will remain in shelters. Some will live within so called natural living areas. Some will need long term veterinary care. Some will die from illness or other causes and some may be euthanised where the law permits it. There may also be transfers between facilities. Whatever happens, each dog has gone somewhere and the records should be capable of showing where.

Mersin therefore gives us a useful example of the difference between reporting activity and reporting outcomes. We know 8,111 dogs were sterilised. We know 2,425 dogs were adopted. We know thousands of places have been created within the municipal care system. What we do not have alongside those figures is the total number of dogs collected since the law changed, the number currently being held across Mersin’s facilities, the number that have died, the number euthanised or the number transferred elsewhere.

None of that means those outcomes have not been recorded internally and their absence from the information currently available should not be interpreted as evidence that dogs have been harmed or disappeared. Mersin is actually publishing more information than we see from many parts of the wider system. That makes the remaining gap more noticeable because so much of the framework is already there.

Before the law changed, thousands of dogs could move through municipal care and return to their communities. Mersin’s own earlier reporting recorded dogs being returned after treatment and sterilisation. Once that exit route was removed, the need for outcome reporting became greater. A growing population of collected dogs cannot simply be measured by how many procedures were performed or how much capacity was created. We also need to know how many dogs remain within that capacity and how many have left it.

Türkiye is undertaking a national collection programme in which enormous emphasis has been placed on getting dogs off the streets. The Interior Minister has said that 97% of stray animals have been collected, yet the absolute number behind that percentage and detailed national outcomes have not been made clear. At municipal level, the same basic principle applies. Collection tells us that a dog entered the system. It does not tell us what happened next.

Mersin’s figures provide an opportunity to see what better reporting could look like because many of the building blocks already exist. If animals entering municipal care are registered and their treatment recorded, it should be possible to follow those records through to an eventual outcome. We should be able to know how many dogs were collected, how many were adopted, how many remain in each facility, how many were transferred and how many died or were euthanised.

Mersin can tell us about thousands of sterilisations. It can tell us about thousands of adoptions. It can tell us about thousands of places created to accommodate animals. These are all meaningful figures, but they measure different parts of the system and cannot be joined together without the information in between.

For the 2,425 dogs that were adopted, we have an outcome.

For the dogs still living within Mersin’s shelters and natural living areas, there should also be an outcome we can see: they are there, they are alive and they remain under municipal care. The question is how many there are. Because once dogs are collected and can no longer be returned to the streets, knowing how many went into the system is only half of the account.

We also need to know where they are now.

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Dog Desk Animal Action Magazine brings together the stories, science, history and welfare issues that shape the lives of dogs.

In our Autumn 2026 issue, we travel from the dogs of Ancient Egypt and the remarkable history of the Saluki to the Ethiopian wolf and Africa’s last wild dogs. We explore how humans created the extraordinary diversity of the moder…

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Türkiye says that 97% of the country’s stray animals have now been collected. But how many animals does 97% actually represent, and what happened to them after they were removed from the streets?

A dog can be collected and taken to a shelter, adopted, transferred elsewhere, remain in long term confinement, die in care or be euthanised. Knowing that an an…

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In November 2025, Algeria appeared to take an important step towards changing the way its street dogs were managed. The Ministry of Agriculture instructed authorities to bring an immediate end to brutal and systematic killing campaigns and called for a move towards a more coordinated approach involving veterinary services, sterilisation and vaccination.

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A dog died during an operation organised by Klang Royal City Council in Malaysia. A volunteer who took part in that operation has now appeared in court accused of causing the dog unnecessary pain or suffering by allegedly strangling him with a looped restraint. The defendant has pleaded not guilty. The allegation has not been proved and the case is due …

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