A VISIT TO GALATI SHELTERS

                                                      by MERRITT CLIFTON

 

 

GALATI -- Romanian League in Defense of Animals founder Dana Costin slipped her identity card into the scanner at the main entrance to the Arcelor Mittal steel mill,  was recognized and cleared for admission,  and we drove inside to count dogs.

 

For the next hour we cruised slowly up and down miles of paved streets and graveled alleys,  looking around every dumpster and every pile of debris heaped up for burning,  under all the parked cars and trucks,  behind each wall and under the many conduits that carry hot air and water from one part of the plant to another.

 

 

We counted 25 dogs on the premises, an area so large that most Romanian towns would fit entirely within the fenced and hedged steel mill boundaries.  The complex includes more buildings than most Romanian towns, and bigger buildings,  too.

 

 

Arcelor Mittal employs more than 10,000 residents of Galati, when manufacturing steel at full capacity.  Even in the current economic crisis, with thousands of employees laid off,  Arcelor Mittal is still perhaps the biggest single employer in Romania.

In Communist times, before Arcelor Mittal bought the mill from the Romanian government,  and began to upgrade and automate the equipment,  thousands more people worked at the plant.  Old ceremonial arches and monuments attest that the mill was among the few triumphs of the Romanian Communist regime -- a world-class steel mill,  as productive as any,  instrumental in rebuilding Galati after the city was more than 90% destroyed and more than half the residents were killed during World War II.

 

A precondition for the admission of Romania to the European Union was that Arcelor Mittal had to install up-to-date pollution control equipment.
I first saw the mill just before that,  in early 2004,  when it looked much as it had in the Communist era.
At a distance the mill seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon.
Below the mill crouched the concrete apartment blocks that the Communist regime built to put the survivors of the war back in homes,  and later,  to house thousands of other people who came to work in the mill.

 

The lower Danube River,  immediately in front of me,  was obscured by an industrial port.  Not the blue Danube of  songs,  here it was the brown Danube of barge traffic.
Above the mill billowed clouds of coal smoke,  noxious and yellow with sulphur.
Above the coal smoke was not a bright promise of heaven but rather a leaden grey sky,  threatening perpetually to dampen and crush the spirits of anyone who dared to hope for anything beyond hard work and the cultural isolation of the Cold War -- even 14 years after the Cold War ended with the collapse of Communism.

 

Yet there had always been hope,  even in the darkest days.  Many residents of Galati determinedly painted anything they could in bright colors,  undeterred by the soot that soon turned the most cheerful scenes dingy.
Where did the hope come from?

 

 

"Whenever humans are unhappy,  the gods send dogs,"  according to a Hindu proverb.  Until the Indian firm Mittal bought the steel mill and became Arcelor Mittal,  there were few if any Hindus in Romania -- but there were always dogs,  whose wagging tails as they begged for handouts reminded Romanians that they must never give up,  that times would somehow get better.
 Like secret agents of hope the dogs stole in and out of shadows around the grim concrete buildings and slipped wraith-like through the security barricades at the steel mill.

 
In Communist times the armed steel mill sentries were occasionally ordered to shoot dogs on sight,  allegedly because the dogs might be rabid,  but more likely just to send a message to anyone who might imagine resisting the iron weight of authority.  The shooting failed.  Though most of the dogs ran from the gunshots,   they never quit finding their way around or under the fences,  and never quit their anarchic defiance of any attempt to repress them.

 

Later,  the steel mill dogs were just poisoned.  That was quieter,  easier,  safer -- but the dogs continued to find their way up to the mill from the city below,  because food could be begged from the mill workers and warm places to sleep could be found amid hot pipes.  For every treacherous human whose food gift was laced with strychnine,  hundreds would offer favorite dogs genuine kindness,  in exchange for the dogs' wagging tails,  signaling hope no matter what,

 

Throughout the world I have found that the brightest,  happiest,  most inspired people in any community are usually those who allow dogs to share their lives and,  in turn,  give the dogs back some affection and care.  This was as true in Romania as anywhere,  and most especially true in Galati.
 In a village on the outskirts of Galati,  beyond the steel mill,  beyond the end of the paved roads,  Dana Costin had constructed the first Romanian League in Defense of Animals dog shelter as a monument to optimism.

 
At a time when almost every other "animal shelter" in Romania was a grim canine concentration camp,  where depressed dogs deprived of the opportunity to live by their wits starved,  fought,  and sometimes even lost hope,  the ROLDA shelter was a safe,  happy place.

At a time when Romanian orphanages built in the Communist era,  mostly now closed,  were still internationally notorious for the bleak conditions they afforded to abandoned children,  Dana dared to imagine that every dog could find a good home,  if treated as a creature of moral value -- and she found ways for the dogs in her care to brighten some of the orphans' lives,  too.

 
The ROLDA shelter was clean and bright.  Every dog had a bed,  food,  water,  and something to play with.

Dana recognized that she could not rescue every dog.  But she could set a positive example,  she knew,  and if she set a good enough example for the few dozen dogs she could rescue,  she believed she could inspire others to join in the effort.
 If she could raise the standard of living for dogs,  she felt,  she could help to lift the spirits and standards of all of Romania.
Perhaps only a very young person can start with so little and dream so large.   Dana founded ROLDA at age 22.  Inspired by the spirit of dogs,  she was rewarded in her faith several years later when the new management of Arcelor Mittal took notice.

 

Local rumor has it that the steel mill poisoned as many as 2,000 dogs each year until 2004,  but no one was really counting.  What was known was that no matter how many dogs the mill management killed,  both under Communism and afterward,  the same number of dogs occupied the steel mill grounds a year later.  Never had the mill management succeeded in ridding the mill of dogs for longer than just a few months.

A person believing in the divinity of dogs might have concluded that dogs are immortal,  and will always reincarnate.
A person understanding ecology would realize that animal populations always breed up to the carrying capacity of the habitat,  unless somehow inhibited from reproduction.
A person from India might be aware of the synthesis of ecological and religious beliefs in the development of the Indian national Animal Birth Control program.  Introduced in 1966 by Blue Cross of India chief executive Chinny Krishna,  and made national policy in 1997,  the ABC program seeks to replace animal control killing of street dogs with high-volume dog sterilization.

 

The idea is not to eliminate street dogs entirely,  since dogs are needed for rat control and to keep monkeys and feral pigs from wreaking havoc in Indian communities.  Rather,  ABC seeks to replace a perpetually young and reproducing dog population with a more mature,  stable population,  whose birth rate is low enough that there are never more dogs than are really needed to do the dogs' work.

As improved sanitation and greater mechanization of transport reduce the habitat niches for street dogs,  they will gradually fade out,  and the only dogs left will be pets,  as in the developed world;  but meanwhile street dogs have their place,  and -- where ABC is implemented -- are not massacred or mistreated.

 Dogs were poisoned as usual during the first year or two that Arcelor Mittal ran the Galati steel mill,  but some of the management brought from India were shocked by the cruelty of the poisoning,  and hoped to institute an ABC program instead.

Toward the end of 2005 they became aware of Dana and ROLDA.  In early 2006 ROLDA and Arcelor Mittal reached a formal agreement to introduce ABC,  that included Arcelor Mittal making an investment of unprecedented size and ambition in building a second ROLDA dog shelter.
For four years now ROLDA has sterilized the steel mill dogs,  and has removed from the grounds any dogs whose behavior occasions complaints.

 

The second ROLDA shelter,  though still unfinished,  now houses more than 400 dogs.  The mill population has almost disappeared.  Even if the 25 dogs we saw were only 10% of the number remaining at the mill,  the mill dog population would be barely 12% of the numbers said to have formerly been poisoned.
 Between sterilizing dogs and removing problematic dogs,  ROLDA appears to have reached the tipping point about two years ago at which the Arcelor Mittal dog population went into a steep decline.  Now the challenge is to sustain the effort,  finding and promptly sterilizing any fertile newcomers before they reproduce,  and eliminating refuse disposal practices that may attract dogs.

When Dana spotted a female dog whose breasts indicated recent nursing,  she immediately telephoned the location coordinates to her capture crew.  The dog would be caught and spayed before nightfall,  if all went well,  or the next day if she could not be quickly captured -- but she would not be allowed to breed again.

Late winter is the annual low ebb of the dog population cycle.  By late spring one might find more nursing and pregnant dogs.  But late winter is also the time of year when street dogs,  like wildlife,  find the least to eat.
 Back in 2004 the Galati dogs,  like the dogs throughout Romania,  were mostly still thin and otherwise showing the effects of winter even in early May.
Since then,  despite the recession of the past two years,  Romania has become much more prosperous. Dogs have shared in the prosperity.  Traveling to Sighisoara and Reghin in the northern part of the country,  I saw everywhere that dogs are now fewer than in 2004,  but are more robust,  with healthier coats.

 

 In some places,  including Reghin,  dogs are still shot,  so perhaps only the strongest and wariest survive.  In other communities dogs are still poisoned.
In Galati dogs found at large may be taken by the authorities to either of two pounds,  which are still the same canine concentration camps that they were in 2004,  or they may be taken by individual rescuers to several private shelters.  The largest,  operated by an organization called Help Labus,  presently houses about 600 dogs and some cats on a muddy former farm beneath high power lines,  at the end of an almost impassible dirt road running parallel to the railway.

Though Help Labus tries to avoid becoming a canine concentration camp,  it is at best a refugee camp.  The dogs are fed,  and have resting boards and cloths to lie on,  but most of the work of the organization appears to go into just expanding the facilities,  constantly,  to accommodate more and more dogs.

 
Few resources are available for sterilizing dogs,  doing public education,  arranging adoptions,  or doing any of the other work needed to accomplish more than just saving dogs from the dogcatchers.

 ROLDA is by contrast not primarily about saving dogs from dogcatchers.  Saving dogs from dogcatchers matters a great deal to Dana,  but because she tends to take the long view of the situation,  ROLDA is chiefly about changing the paradigm for dogs,  cats,  other animals,  and human/animal relationships.

 

Operating the shelter built by Arcelor Mittal is the largest ROLDA project,  but it has never been the only ROLDA project.  That shelter -- call it ROLDA #2 -- exists as an essential component of the Arcelor Mittal steel mill dog population control project,  but Dana hopes that every dog in the shelter will eventually find a home,  and that even those who do not will eventually enjoy lives comparable to dogs who have homes.Of course that is as yet a distant ambition. Dana acknowledges that at the present state of completion, ROLDA #2 is still a prison for dogs,  not what she wants it to become.  It is clean, well-maintained,  and the dogs are well fed. 

 

 ROLDA #2 compares well with most animal control shelters in most of the world,  but does not yet give impounded dogs the amenities that Dana anticipates adding just as rapidly as funding becomes available to add them.  Currently the site does not even have a water supply or electricity, though high voltage electric lines run above part of it.  Electricity and a water line may be extended from a nearby cluster of new housing, or ROLDA may need to have a well drilled.  This will cost money, which has yet to be raised.

Meanwhile,  water is trucked in.

 

Right now ROLDA #2 consists of two parallel rows of concrete paddocks,  divided into "apartments" much larger than conventional kennels,  housing as many as five or six dogs apiece.  Most hold fewer.  The dogs have running and play space in the front of each unit,  with an enclosed room at the back providing protection against the bitter winds that sweep the barren hilltop location.
The Arcelor Mittal mill dominates the horizon, across a valley.

Donated plastic shipping pallets were intended to be used as resting boards,  but have proved to be inappropriate because,  unlike wooden pallets,  they contain openings that attract muck and are difficult to clean.  The easiest solution to this problem will be to use the plastic pallets to support plank resting boards -- but the planks must be purchased and trucked in.

The paddocks occupy less than half of the long,  narrow ROLDA #2 lot.  Dana envisons landscaping the rest,  with trees,  vines,  and shrubbery to break the force of the winter wind;  adding outdoor dog play areas;  and adding stables and exercise space for horses and donkeys.  Horses and donkeys,  as recently as 2004,  still did a significant share of the farm work in Romania.  Now they are rapidly being replaced by motor vehicles.  Tens of thousands of horses and donkeys have been sold to slaughter.  Many others have been abandoned to wander.  Dana would like to accommodate the horses and donkeys who are abandoned around Galati.

 

 Dogs and equines are often housed successfully in proximity to each other in other parts of the world.  Watching each other and sometimes playing chase games with each other -- on opposite sides of a sturdy fence -- helps to keep both the dogs and the equines mentally fit.
Before ROLDA #2 can accommodate horses and donkeys,  Dana must develop the donation base necessary to building their quarters,  feeding them,  and providing quality care,  including regular hoof-trimming.  Hiring the necessary help will not be difficult,  as Romania is full of former horse caretakers who have been thrown out of work by mechanization.  But Dana must raise the funds to ensure that whomever she hires is paid.

 
Eventually Dana would also like to add a gleaming boutique-like adoption center,  like those that have proven hugely successful in finding good homes for dogs and cats in the U.S. and Britain.  That can wait until the access road is paved,  and Romanians become affluent enough to acquire pets as American and British people do.
 But,  as rapidly as the Romanian economy is expanding,  the wait until the appropriate time to build the adoption center may be just a few years.  It is not too soon to begin planning it.
For now,  within the range of early affordability,  ROLDA #2 needs applications of rust paint to the steel mesh fronts of the dog runs.  The cold Romanian winters and hot summers are hard on every sort of building material.  As in keeping ships seaworthy,  frequent repainting is a must.  Repainting will protect the shelter infrastructure -- and,  as important,  will show visitors that people care about this place and these dogs.

 

During the past 20-odd years I have developed a 100-point shelter scoring system that assesses how well the facilities serve the needs of the animals.  Only six shelters have ever achieved perfect scores.  In Eastern Europe I have evaluated 24 shelters.  Only three have scored as high as 70.  ROLDA #2 scored 67.
When Dana raises the funds to do everything at ROLDA #2 that she currently envisions,  the score could go to 100.  There are no critical design flaws to impede improvements.  What now exists is a sound foundation for further development.

 
 Right now ROLDA #2 falls short of realizing full potential simply because every improvement must be paid for -- along with everything else that ROLDA is doing,  and everything else that ROLDA needs.

 Time and the Romanian weather have not be kind to ROLDA #1,  the small shelter a short distance away that I first saw in 2004.  Most obviously,  the weight of accumulated snow and ice have buckled the roofing above some of the kennels.  Some of the tile flooring is cracked. Dogs have given every part of the facilities hard use.

Built inexpensively,  but with loving care,  much of ROLDA #1 is already due for replacement.  Building and operating it could be described as a successful learning exercise.  Here Dana first showed what she could do,  in one of the most difficult environments in for humane work in Europe,  and perhaps the world.

Reconstruction has already started,  but has been suspended due to tight funding and winter conditions.  The concrete foundation is in place for a building to house cats.  Building materials for completing the job are stacked nearby.
Dana's plan is to replace her original cottage for visiting volunteers with a larger building,  to accommodate a charity veterinary clinic that will provide free pet sterilization for Galatians,  plus new volunteer housing.  The dog kennels will be replaced next.

 

While assessing everything that was underway, everything that is damaged,  and every job that still needs to be started,  I was impressed again by how much is right about ROLDA #1.  The buildings and layout of the grounds well suit dogs' needs.  The only unhappy dogs at ROLDA #1 are those who have just arrived.  Soon they will make friends and live and play with congenial companions.
The entire shelter,  as on my first visit,  was as clean as mud season permits.  Nothing is allowed to be dirty,  or stink.  Every detail expresses care.

 

 

ROLDA #1 scored 79 in 2004,  at the time the highest score I had given in Eastern Europe.  Despite the battering that ROLDA #1 has received from the elements in the interim,  it scored 84 in 2010, benefiting from various improvements made since 2004.    ROLDA #1 remains conceptually sound and a safe, comfortable environment for both dogs and the people who work there.  Everything that can be done without much money to maintain and improve it is being done.  What it needs most is the investment to redevelop it,  as planned,  incorporating the lessons of the seven years it has been in operation.

Of course every animal charity needs money.

 

Every animal charity could do more and better work if it had more money.  Every animal charity director has dreams and ambitions of what could be done,  if only adequate funding became available.
 The difference I perceive between ROLDA and many others is that ROLDA from the beginning has built in what my late friend Henry Spira termed a "step-wise, incremental manner" toward goals well beyond the immediate horizons.

 

ROLDA #1 was built,  for example,  not only to show fellow Romanians how dogs should be sheltered,  but to show how dogs should be treated as pets.  It was,  and is,  not just a holding facility for dogs,  but a home,  where dogs are actively prepared to be adopted successfully.
ROLDA #2 was built as part of a project demonstrating that animal control need not consist merely of killing dogs.

 

Adding cat and equine facilities are projects meant not only to increase the ROLDA animal rescue capacity,  but to show that all animals' lives have moral value,  and all animal suffering is to be prevented.
Adding the free clinic and expanding the existing ROLDA dog and cat sterilization capacity will be huge steps toward encouraging and enabling fellow Galatians -- who have always fed dogs and cats on the streets -- to take pets completely into their lives.

Pollution control has made the Galatian horizons far more visible -- and farther distant -- than in 2004.  

 

Most Romanians appear to be thinking, planning, and dreaming much farther ahead.
But even when the clouds were heaviest and the days darkest, Dana was following dogs' hopes to brighter times.

 

 

This article was writen by Merritt Clifton after visiting all the shelters within Galati area in March 2010.