A Truly Significant Holiday - Passport magazine

and bad sanitary conditions, exclaims
Ekaterina Volkova, an animal activist
with a 25-year history of defending animal
rights. These turn out to be “not shelters
but death camps,” she concluded.
Not homeless anymore
Ekaterina doesn’t believe that the new
shelters will bring any potential benefits.
She thinks that the best decision would
be to support existing private shelters as
their owners have a lot of enthusiasm but
not enough money to manage to cover
expenses. Ekaterina uses her three-room
apartment to keep about sixteen dogs
of different ages and breeds. “All these
might have been killed,” - she says with
a sad smile while dogs surround me with
interest. Some of them were found after
they were hit by cars, the others were
starving on the street until they were
picked up and saved. “This is a unique
one,” - Ekaterina points to an elderly
Labrador. “We found her under a railway
platform and took her to the vet,
and to our surprise we found out that
she’s pure-bred!”
All the dogs seem to be very friendly
and sociable; wagging their tails in a
hospitable way, except some individuals
locked in the next room. They are
not allowed to join the company so they
bark every now and then, outraged with
such unfairness.
“This one is Julia, she was mine, now
I’ve got her back from a woman who
adopted her 11 years ago. The woman is
now dying of cancer and can no longer
take care of her,” explains Ekaterina. After
thinking for a while she adds: “I guess
we wouldn’t be in need of these shelters
at all, if people were more humane and
could adopt a puppy or an abandoned
animal. And also it could be much better
if the owners didn’t take home a dog
before they think twice. Many of them
try to get rid of their pets after they realize
just what a responsibility looking after
an animal is.”
Last woman standing
The story of Veronika Borash and her
shelter “Solnyshko” is sad from any point
of view. “Solnyshko” was one of the biggest
and one of the best known animal
asylums in Moscow and the true pride
of its mistress too. Now the shelter is no
more. There are three or four dozens
dogs dwelling in a small part of its former
territory. About a dozen more live
in Veronika’s modest apartment, in a
block of flats next door. Here she houses
domesticated dogs which cannot get
along with those who have lived on the
street for a long time.
“There was a huge rubbish dump next
to my house [a two-stored ‘Khruschevka’]
twenty-five years ago, and one day
I decided to clean it up and create a
shelter for abandoned animals. With
the neighbors’ and many others’ help,
we somehow built kennels and open-air
cages. They pooled their resources and
bought me a car,” -she recounts with
real excitement. “I could keep about
300 dogs at once. I found owners for
more than four hundred homeless animals
over the last twenty-five years.”
Then she had a territory of about
3,500 sq meters to realize her dream
of saving animals’ lives. It was called
“Dogs City” by her neighbors. Every
day people brought puppies and adult
dogs and put them on her doorstep, she
took them all in. “I couldn’t leave any of
them on the street. Because they are all
alive, you understand? They are alive!”
Her sincere eyes are filled with unhidden
pain.
This idyllic story finished late in 2005,
when the shelter was razed to the ground
by representatives from the local authorities.
Veronika will never forget this. Even
now, memories of that day come back
to haunt her and her eyes fill with tears.
“They came here with huntsmen and
destroyed everything, and killed many
of my dogs right before my eyes. Some
of them tried to hide under the floor of
City Beat
the kennels but they couldn’t,” her voice
trembles again with emotion. “I had two
heart attacks after that.”
The shelter was ruined, but not her
plans and calling to save lives. After
being released from hospital, she managed
to get permission to fence off a
small territory to organize something
like a shelter again. That’s where her
new friends – mongrels and pedigrees
– live right now. Somehow, this vigorous
woman in her mid-seventies finds the
strength to feed, cure, and take care of
her wards.
Her dogs are under shelter. Others, still
wandering the streets are not so lucky. P
March 2009 25