The right to life for people and dogs: who is responsible for the aggression of homeless animals

Irina Mishina

The chronicle of the attacks of stray dogs on people lately resembles a horror movie script.

January 22. In the village of Domna, Chita District, Trans-Baikal Territory, the body of a 7-year-old girl torn to pieces by dogs was found in a wasteland.

January 26th. In the Astrakhan region, a pack of stray dogs attacked a man. According to the Investigative Committee, a 58-year-old local resident was walking to work, on the way he was attacked by stray dogs. The man died at the scene from his injuries.

On February 12, in Orenburg, near school No. 56, a pack of dogs attacked a 13-year-old girl. The emergency room reported that this is the third victim of stray animals in a day.

Pereslavl-Zalessky. Svetlana Spiridonova, 35, was the victim of stray dogs who attacked her near the city morgue.

Regional media reports that after the tragic deaths due to dog attacks, people began their own hunt for street dogs, as the authorities were inactive. In Astrakhan, someone began to kill and hang dogs on trees, and in the Trans-Baikal Territory, men began to shoot street dogs themselves. In Samara, an eyewitness filmed a pack of chipped dogs attacking a boy. The child was not hurt, he was saved by the fact that he was not alone. But this time...

The regional Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee promptly responded to a report about an attack by aggressive dogs on a child in Orenburg. The department announced the initiation of a criminal case on the fact of negligence of officials of the housing and communal services department of the Orenburg administration. Officials of the UZHKH did not organize the work of catching, transporting and keeping stray animals.

Orenburg Children's Ombudsman Anzhelika Linkova said on her Instagram that she was preparing an appeal to the presidential commissioner for children's rights to discuss the issue of solving the problem of stray animals at the federal level. According to the Ombudsman, a set of measures should include solving the problems of shelters, as well as the development of a law that will tighten the responsibility of animal owners. By the way, they are already being dealt with at the federal level at the initiative of the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. The Ombudsman also insists on shooting dogs where necessary and on reconsidering "the very approach to the problem" - "in order to live in a civilized society, to raise children in safety, who, among other things, must be protected from the observation of cruelty to animals”, writes Anzhelika Linkova on the social network.

Social networks emphasize that the current law does not solve the problem of stray dogs. They are sterilized, microchipped and returned to the places where they were taken from. However, people continue to throw dogs on the street. They are breeding. There is no end in sight to the problem.

Users write in networks:

- “It will be so until the moment of disposal. There are no options. Trapping - sterilization - vaccination failed as expected. The result - children bitten alive, dirty cities and densely stuffed pockets of those who benefit. It's time to allow euthanasia, you can't live like this anymore".

- “I am for shooting stray stray dogs, this year I have already fought back twice, how much can I do? Spring is coming, and they will breed, and it’s impossible to walk around the city calmly, but how to let the children go? It is necessary to return the law on the shooting of stray dogs”, - said another commentator.

Recall: criminal liability for the owner of the dog occurs if the animal has harmed human health. If the owner of the dog deliberately set the dog on another person, as a result of which he suffered, then he faces up to 8 years in prison in case of damage to health in accordance with Art. 111 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. And up to 3 years in prison, if the victim received injuries that are not life-threatening, but caused long-term treatment and disability in accordance with Art. 112 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. If the incident happened by accident, and the owner of the dog is not guilty that another person was seriously injured, then the punishment may be: a fine of up to 80,000 rubles; mandatory work up to 480 hours; arrest up to six months; restriction of freedom up to 3 years; correctional labor up to 2 years (according to Article 118 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). This article can be applied in particular in a situation where the owner of the dog did not cope with it on a leash during a walk, and it bit a passerby. But who will answer if a homeless animal attacked a person?

Recent incidents have made society ask the question: where did packs of stray dogs come from lately, attacking villages, towns and cities?

“The cause of homelessness is actually one. The owner got a dog. It needs to be sterilized, but the owners do not want to. If we are talking about breeders, then everything is clear, but most ordinary owners have dogs that are not sterilized. As a result, all the offspring ends up on the street, the puppies are thrown out. This is where the problem needs to be tackled. For example, to take fines not 2 thousand, but 200 thousand, then, perhaps, it will work. This should become the rule: if you bring an animal - sterilize it, this is the only way to stop uncontrolled reproduction. There is a lot of talk about dog shelters. But have you seen these shelters? This is a kilometer of enclosures and volunteers, who are not enough for everyone, as a result, no one walks dozens of dogs. Conditions in shelters are difficult. Dogs in shelters live up to 3-5 years, and cats even less. Overcrowding, infections, all this affects animals”, - Natalya Dunaevskaya, head of the “Feed” project of the Urban Animal Protection Fund, told NI.

Under the Responsible Treatment of Animals Act, stray dogs are caught and neutered. At the point of overexposure after sterilization and vaccination, the law prescribes to keep the animal for a month, and then return it to the natural environment again. But all this often turns into a new risk factor.

“Within a month, a dog that is used to getting food on its own receives food from a person, ceases to be afraid of him and perceives him as a food provider - this is also dangerous”, - says Yelena Shadrina, Doctor of Biology, chief researcher at the Institute of Biological Problems of the Permafrost of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

It is prohibited by law to kill stray animals. And the option to support all your life rests on financial calculation.

“Today, in Yakutia, keeping one dog costs 280 rubles a day, one dog needs 105,000 rubles, let’s multiply by 1,000 dogs already in the detention center - 105 million rubles a year”, - said Roman Mandzyak, assistant to the head of Yakutsk.

For reference: the construction of a shelter for 500 places costs 20-50 million rubles, keeping one animal there costs 10-12 thousand rubles a month. At the same time, on average, in one Russian city, there are 10-50 thousand dogs and cats on the streets. That is, in each city it will be necessary to build up to 100 shelters, to catch animals and keep them there for life in cages. The maintenance of one dog in a shelter will be equivalent to the payment of an average pension.

Meanwhile, in Yakutsk alone, dogs bitten about 900 people last year. Of these, half of the attacks were committed by stray dogs. The situation is unlikely to change until strict control over organizations that deal with animals is introduced.

“Federal Law No. 498-FZ “On Responsible Treatment of Animals” does not effectively combat attacks by stray dogs on people. At the same time, the law makes it possible to spend budget money inefficiently: for example, in the Chelyabinsk region, 41,000 rubles are spent annually on every stray dog caught. In total, in Russia, according to Rospotrebnadzor, from 300 to 400 thousand people are attacked by stray dogs every year, and you can see what is happening now in the news - dogs kill both children and adults”, - says LJ user anonim-from-rus.

Residents of the Orenburg region in their petition on Change.org offer drastic measures:

“Introduce the possibility of humane killing of animals that may be dangerous to humans, introduce responsibility for the owners of animals who left them unattended, introduce state registration by owners of animals, especially potentially dangerous breeds, and monitor the location of registered animals”.

Today, the humane law 498-FZ is in force, which provides for a phased scheme: capture - sterilization - vaccination - return to the habitat. However, more and more votes are being heard for its abolition.

“The repeal of this law will lead to the fact that animals will be killed with impunity. But shelters are in short supply. Municipalities do not want to finance shelters, and in the regions they do not consider spending budget money on homeless animals a priority. So far, everything rests on volunteers like us. We distribute food to animals, we try to somehow support”, - says Natalya Dunaevskaya, head of the Feed project of the Urban Animal Protection Fund.

But city officials don't think feeding is such a good idea.

“Feeding, which some townspeople do regularly, provokes animals to defend the zone where they live. The municipality does not have the leverage to change the situation", - said the acting head of Orenburg UZHKH Anatoly Baikarov.

To date, according to the first deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on Ecology, Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Vladimir Burmatov , the State Duma has processed 38,569 proposals that have been submitted to parliament. Legislators have identified priority requests of citizens. Among them are support for the construction of shelters, volunteer organizations, fines for walking dogs in the wrong place.

The Russian Bar Association “For Human Rights” addressed the editorial office of NI. The statement says: “It is important to remember that the issue of keeping homeless animals is the responsibility of the municipal government, as is the organization of animal shelters, the implementation of the program of sterilization and chipping of homeless animals, returning them to families, finding a suitable family. Money is allocated for all this, but the number of stray dogs in some areas indicates the misuse of funds, or, more simply, corruption. Responsibility should be borne not by animals, but by officials who plundered the budget allocated for solving problems. Each case of a dog attack on a person is the basis for an inspection by the prosecutor's office.

The paradox of the situation is that volunteer organizations today are much more effective in dealing with the problem of homeless animals than the authorities. For municipalities, homeless animals seem to be just a budget item. And while this is true, the victims will not stop.