They Are Stuffing Dogs In Small Spaces Like Sardines In A Can

This image hit me hard earlier this week. A Turkish animal advocate posted it on her X account with this message “Produce policies befitting humanity and abolish slaughter laws when determining the living conditions of animals with whom we share the world and who benefit the ecosystem much more than we humans do” Picture credit @aslialpar on X

In Turkish culture, it is generally not accepted that dogs should be confined to shelters. Until President Erdogan’s speech in 2023 which triggered the creation of a questionable law, all dogs were free to roam at large. Even owned dogs come & go as they please if their owners allow it. The streets teem with dogs who do not belong to anybody & in some quarters this practice is romanticised into a notion I find peculiar. Dogs are woven into the fabric of society, at one with the humans who share the towns & cities with them, living in harmony. A wonderful idea but the truth is, that in our imperfection this utopian world does not exist.

More than half the population find dogs on the streets difficult to live with & many of that percentage actively seek them out & hunt them down to do them harm. The new law has been seen as an attempt to appease this baying mob. A law which dictates that each municipality with a population over a certain number build a shelter & adopt a European model of dog management.

You may be wondering what could possibly be bad about wanting to make stray dogs safe, keep them well & find homes for them?

The biggest problem is that there are no homes for the strays. Only 5% of the population currently accept dogs & most of that number choose to buy breed dogs. Those who accept mixed breed strays are most often multiple dog households struggling to support their dogs in an economic environment plagued by hyperinflation.

Most of the dogs sent to the public shelters will remain there for the rest of their lives. We know that a kennel environment is not ideal. In the UK & many other countries dogs are given adequate food, medical care & as much human & canine company as we can manage while in shelters. This isn’t the case in Turkey.

The AK Party controls Turkey currently & is not known for it’s budgetary kindness to dogs. Mayors struggle with funding. They also struggle to understand exactly what a dog needs to keep them comfortable never mind what is needed to make them happy & why should they. As already stated only 5% of the country share a home with a dog.

The image above is of Mamak public shelter, the recent focus of public anger. Animal advocates stormed the shelter finding multiple examples of neglect. The mayor volleyed with accusations aimed at veterinarians & shelter employees who he said would be investigated & sacked. The image shared by social media user @aslialpar shows dogs “warehoused” in small pens on concrete floors away from natural sunlight, water reflecting off the concrete indicating a hosing down system while the dogs are in the pens or that they are returned to the pen quickly after. Can you imagine the torment a dog would experience living that way day after day, month after month until they draw their last breath.

Credit @DokuzOlmaz on X

Animal advocate & social media user @DokuzOlmaz has documented many instances of questionable practices in municipal shelters over the years & overcrowding appears to be a common theme since the new law passed.

The public now feel entitled to call for any dog on the street they dislike to be removed. If they say the dog is sick or aggressive mayors are duty bound to comply with calls to remove & quickly scenes such as that shown above accumulate.

I can guarantee that many of the dogs in this image will no longer be alive or are at serious risk of losing their lives.

None of these dogs will have been vaccinated against prolific infectious disease. Just one sick dog introduced to that pen has the potential to wipe out the whole lot. And, we don’t yet fully know how municipalities will react to disease in the shelters. The law now states that they can euthanise dogs with incurable illness. How will that be interpreted? Will lack of funds to purchase medications needed to cure disease deem the illness incurable? We know this almost happened in one municipality when dogs had mange. The veterinarians were ordered to pts perfectly healthy dogs instead of treating them & they did not comply. Under pressure from audit they used the bodies of dogs who had been killed by cars & treated the mange patients themselves. Actions we see as being incredibly heroic in the west carry heavy penalties for the veterinarians concerned if they were ever caught fooling the system.

Fights will easily break out in cramped conditions. Food is the major trigger. Many times we see posts on social media claiming that dogs were so hungry they killed their kennel mates & ate them. While this does happen most deaths occur during fights over food. The dogs will fight for space also & entire males at the mercy of hormones will brawl with fatal outcomes.

This is the shelter project, a collaborative effort. Historic, it is the first time an animal advocate, a mayor & a foreign NGO came together to provide the dogs with something better than they had & we couldn’t be prouder.

Every municipal shelter should be like this. The dogs live in hygienic conditions with space to be dogs, they have the sun on their backs & will soon have the benefit of a forest area to play in.