Animal welfare group finds systemic neglect at public dog shelters in Romania

BUCHAREST, Romania -- In a steel-mesh pen at a compound in eastern Romania, a dog licks icy water from a metal drinking bucket while another chews listlessly on dried feces scattered on the hard ground.

The scenes, captured on video, are among the findings from an undercover investigation into conditions in Romania’s publicly funded shelters for stray dogs, carried out by the international animal welfare organization Vier Pfoten, known as Four Paws.

Between Jan. 8-18, the animal welfare group sent investigators to nine shelters in different parts of the country, documenting what it describes as “high death rates and disturbing conditions” amounting to “systemic neglect.”

The welfare group found overcrowded kennels, dogs suffering from untreated open wounds, and many living in kennels exposed to freezing winter temperatures.

Romania has an estimated 500,000 stray dogs, one of the largest populations in the European Union. Many thousands of strays are kept in shelters, from where they can be adopted, or, in some cases, euthanized.

Manuela Rowlings, a stray animal specialist at Four Paws, told The Associated Press that the investigation shows the cases are not isolated and a “systems change” is needed.

“Public shelters are horrible places in Romania,” she said. “It’s simply places where dogs are locked up and where they wait to die, and they do not even receive the minimum care or minimum standards.”

“Enclosures were frequently soiled with feces and overcrowded, leading to aggression and fighting among the dogs,” the Four Paws report states. “One dog even appeared to have bitten off parts of his own tail due to the highly stressful environment.”

At a public shelter in western Arad County, one of the better shelters visited, Four Paws found concrete floors, no bedding or heating, and no stimulation or toys for the dogs. The group praised the staff for their efforts in trying to improve conditions and increase adoption rates.

The report criticized many of the shelters for their reluctance to facilitate adoptions, and said freedom of information requests revealed a lack of transparency on funding, intake of stray dogs, and euthanasia figures.

Romania’s National Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority, which oversees animal welfare and the management of shelters, didn’t immediately reply to the AP's requests for comment.

In 2024, 134 of the 644 dogs admitted to a shelter in northeastern Galati County were adopted, 28 were legally euthanized, and 412 died of “other causes,” according to data obtained by the welfare group.

“There is nothing that can be reported to the authorities, because it is not illegal to keep dogs in very, very poor conditions in the shelters,” Rowlings said.

In 2013, after a 4-year-old boy was killed by strays in the capital Bucharest, Romania passed a law that saw thousands of strays rounded up, placed in kennels, and euthanized if they weren't adopted after 14 days.

Animal welfare campaigners have long argued that a mass neutering campaign is the most effective way to tackle the issue in the long term.

Hilde Tudora, Director of Animal Protection at Ilfov County Council, told the AP that the reason mass sterilization isn’t being properly implemented is that the dogs have become a “money-making machine,” with public money often funding private shelters.

“Private companies have swelled up with public money, and then it turned into a business,” she said. “There must be dogs, because if you castrate en masse, there’s no more merchandise … No one really wants to solve the problem.”

A legislative bill filed in November last year proposed recognizing animals as “living beings with rights and freedoms” and suggested a transition from euthanizing to sterilization and microchipping.

Andrei Baciu, a parliamentarian from the National Liberal Party, said Romania has spent over 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in the last three decades on euthanizing stray dogs.

“From a single pair of unsterilized dogs can appear, in just six years, over 67,000 puppies,” he said in a Facebook post. “Capturing and euthanizing them would cost around 13.4 million euros ($15.6 billion). With the same money, we could sterilize 268,000 dogs.”

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McGrath reported from Leamington Spa, England.