Stella Raycheva and Nadia Stancheva participated in this year’s ICAW Conference in Prague. We made many new contacts among the 250 participants and learned allot.

The International Companion Animal Welfare Conference (ICAWC) provides organisations with information on shelter management, animal legislation, animal behavior and humane education. It’s designed to offer hope and lots of practical advice for smaller animal shelters.

After the conference we will make some changes in the way we run our shelter. We’ve also got a hold of a fantastic desinfectant that we hope to obtain soon for our clinic and quarantine.

Vessy (far right) and the team of De Reddingsboei

Our head keeper Vessy has returned from a 2-week working practice in a Dutch shelter.  Sharing knowledge and learning from others’ experience is the way to achieve efficiency and improve our quality of work. We are thankfull to De Reddingsboei – in Geleen who gave Vessy the wonderful opportunity of working in their environment.

Vessy helping the ambulance vets in Geleen

Vessy was able to work in all fields – cleaning, walking, feeding, socializing the dogs; helping the ambulance vets to bring injured or ill animals to the shelter clinic. She had a very inspiring experience and came back to us full of energy.

Vessy’s profound experience with animals was of use in Geleen

Cleaning is a whole lot different in Holland and in Bulgaria

Besides having a great time in the shelter Vessy had a surprise meeting with a few dogs adopted in Sittard-Geleen through Animal Rescue Sofia. Animal Rescue Sofia supporters Birgitta and Karin organized the owners of Eppie, Joe and Mommo for a group walk, she also met a boy she fostered for a long time – the former Seslavci death-roll boy we used to call Patch.

Special thanks to Karin Stramans who housed Vessy during her stay in Holland!

Guest-lecturers Mr. Robert Smith from the UK and Mrs. Nathalie Klinge from the Netherlands are both world-renown experts on the Catch-Neuter-Vaccinate-Return policy. Among the other lecturers were experts from Animal Rescue Sofia – Stanislava Stancheva, Murat Bechan – FPCC Turkey, Vier Pfoten – Bulgaria – D-r Marina Ivanova, and the Deutsch-Bulgarischen Strasentier-Nothilfe – Ziba Chakarian, etc…

Stella Raycheva, Stanislava Stancheva, Robert Smith, Nadia Stancheva, Nathalie Klinge

The participants of the seminar were mainly ecology experts, representatives of municipalities and NGOs from all over Bulgaria – the goal was to give them a better knowledge and clearer view on the TNR method and it’s advantages, as well as shared experience from the FPCC’s many successful projects in Turkey and Romania.

We are very happy to have been part of this event, we beleive it is the start of a positive and nation-wide reinforcement of the CNVR (or TNR) method in Bulgaria, the latter being the most sustainable solution to the stray dogs population problem. Participating municipalities and veterinary officials got many new ideas of how a well-managed CNVR should be run, what are the basic compponents of a successful campaign, what are the costs, the risks, the pitfalls. The participants also had a chance to gain a better understanding on the use of Public-Private partnerships and the importance of the coordinated synergy of effort, why only a nation-wide CNVR will be successfull, why it is useless to invest in shelters in the current situation that we are experiencing in Bulgaria.

SEE SOME OF THE LECTURES HERE ON VIDEO – - – - – PRESS-RELEASE AVAILABLE IN BULGARIAN ONLY

Photos by Nadejda Stamenova, MoiaZona.org:

SEMINAR

“IMPLEMENTATION OF SUSTAINABLE PRACTICE OF SOLVING THE DOG OVERPOPULATION PROBLEM IN BULGARIA”

ANIMAL RESCUE SOFIA THANKS MR.DAVID NEWALL AND DOGS TRUST FOR THIS AMAZING OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN AND MEET SO MANY WODERFUL PEOPLE FROM ANIMAL WELLFARE GROUPS AROUND EUROPE!

The shelter and neutering station of Oradea has a little over of 300 dogs and a staff of 15 people. This facillity has over 6 000 dogs neutered and vaccinated since the municipality of Oradea signed contract with FPCC in 2003.

The shelter and neutering station of Margita is home to about 150 dogs and is something very special – an enclosed piece of land, about 5 000 square meters with a little river running through it where the dogs are able to live in a natural environment and basically have the time of their lives while being sipervized and found homes for. The neutering station has the capacity of about 120 dogs per month. We were welcomed by friendly staff and tail wagging buddies to show us around:

The open shelter ouside the city was something we had never seen before – a large number of dogs, most of which have had behavioral issues, living in perfect harmony on over 60 hectares of land. The concept is something new and we were astonished to see so many happy, healthy and well behaved animals live together peacefully.

Our warmest thanks to Gerry, Carol and their wonderful team for the hospitality and know-how. We hope we can continue to work together and learn from their experience in the future.Visit the SOS DOGS ORADEA website to learn more about their fabulous results in the North-West of Romania in the last decade.

We’ve aquired the SOS DOGS ORADEA educational booklet for children and will start work on producing it’s copy in Bulgarian right away.

The journey was overwhelming. One of the things that impressed us was the general good attitude that the people on Bihor county have to their homeless dogs. SOS DOGS has had over 3 000 dogs adopted localy from their station in Oradea. The change of attitude and the understanding of the Spay&Neuter and Return concept is undoubtedly a product of the excellent educational work of SOS DOGS in the county and their cooperation with the municipality. We hope to be back in Romania soon for our own continuing education.

THANK YOU  FPPC & SOS DOGS ORADEA FOR THE INSPIRATION YOUR WORK IS!