Animal Rescue Sofia is a young Bulgarian organization founded by a group of volunteers with a common goal – solving the stray dogs and cats problem in Sofia.

Currently we manage the largest dog shelter in Bulgaria – the municipal dog shelter in Bogrov, where we take care of 500 dogs and offer free spaying and neutering at our clinic.

• We strive to find good and responsible owners for the dogs and cats place at our care. We seek homes for them both in Bulgaria and abroad.
• We do our best to respond to any signals about dogs and cats in distress but our resources are very limited at times. Almost everyday we receive and try to respond to signals about injured and abused animals.
• We apply the catch-spay-return method as we believe this is the only humane and legal way to curtail the stray dog population successfully. We offer free spaying and neutering at our clinic for both owned and stray dogs.

Animal Rescue Sofia is funded only by private donations. We are not funded by the government, municipality or any foreign NGO. The majority of donations come from our supporters and friends in Bulgaria, while our foreign partners contribute mainly with adoptions and medical supplies.

We work with shelters and partners in Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands. Our Dutch colleagues and supporters registered an NGO with the same name in Holland to assist us with finding homes for our dogs and collecting necessary materials for the clinic and shelter.

We are happy that every week dozens of people come to help at the shelter as volunteers. Their help is priceless as they care of walking and socializing the dogs. Thanks to the volunteers’ efforts, the dogs at the shelter feel comfortable around humans and build trust in people.

Thank you for helping. We believe our joint efforts will help change the destiny of thousands of unwanted dogs and cats living on the streets of our city.

See a short film by Ivan Kulekov about the work of Animal Rescue Sofia  (see in in German):

You can download a short presentation of Animal Rescue Sofia in ENGLISH and GERMAN (*.PDF format).

There is much to be done, but it all comes down the following objectives:

• the running of a well-managed shelter for homeless dogs,
• better coordination with the municipal authorities who currently take care of homeless animals,
• raising general public awareness on adoptions and stray dogs,
• educating the public on responcible dog ownership,
• maintaining widely spread neutering campaigns,
• initiating better policies related to these issues, etc.