Since its establishment till 2024, members of the Association for the Ethical Treatment of Humans and Animals “We are Part of the Solution” have intervened countless times in response to complaints from citizens on animal abuse by individuals, and in public shelters. In both type of cases, we have conducted our investigation i.e. we have gone to the spot to check the facts by visiting animals directly or asked citizens or shelter volunteers to provide the evidence. The former one mostly related to the inhumane treatment of owner’s or stray dogs that have been beaten, neglected, sick, exhausted and on short chains. Some dogs have died in such conditions while the owners did nothing to help them.
In some situations, we have managed to somewhat improve the living conditions for dogs in agreement with the owners. We either donated some food and dogs houses or negotiated with the owners to persuade them to improve the conditions or to decide to give the dogs to someone who can take better care of them. If nothing has worked, whenever found justified we have submitted reports and criminal charges to the authorities seeking for official criminal investigation and stop the violence. On several occasions, we have had positive experiences with the police which have reacted in a professional way while general practice where police either rejects to accept the criminal charge or transfers the responsibility to the veterinary inspections still remains.
As for complaints against public shelters, they have related to bad living conditions and inhumane treatment of stray dogs brought to the shelters, neglecting and illegal killing. In such situations we have asked volunteers or witnesses to provide us sufficient reliable evidence so we sent reports to respective veterinary inspections (and to police where appropriate) which conducted their inspection control. In most cases, our reports, together with our hard work with witnesses and shelter volunteers have initiated improvements in shelters in terms of treatment and conditions for dogs, while sometimes we were criticized by inspections for sending them untrue facts (despite original evidence we provided!) and they protected irregular acts of shelters managements who fabricated and made up conditions in shelters prior to the inspection control.
