Márta Harcsás sent to us this sad story with a good ending…
We went back to the XVIII century. District location together with József Árkosi, representing MÁTSZ (Hungarian Association of Nature Lovers) on the basis of a complaint made by Károly Scherer, a renowned dog sledge racer, who reported Dobermans being kept under appalling conditions.
We arrived at the site on the 11th May where, in the middle of a field in an area enclosed by thin chicken wire, there were Dobermans on the loose in the glaring sun; others were locked into tight multi-storey kennels, doomed to immobility, soiling each other, one cage covered with a thick blue plastic sheet, with no drinking water. Upon our arrival we found out that based on a complaint by a local resident there had already been a visitation to the site by an official from the competent notary’s office with police escort, but they had established that the circumstances did not constitute torture of the animals as the dogs were well fed.
They ordered the owner to remove the dogs from the site and considered the matter thus closed. There are many definitions of what constitutes torturing animals. In Sopron it was through starvation and thirst and the lack of appropriate conditions that their owner committed torture of the animals.Forcing dogs to spend their days with no food or water under the glaring sun in a tight multi storey cage covered with plastic sheeting also constitutes torture. Firstly we contacted Dr László Pallos, Chief Animal Protection Officer of the Ministry of Agriculture, who immediately dispatched the Budapest Animal Protection Officer to the scene. He drew up a three-page report stating the ways in which the animals were being tortured. The police, through lack of an official complaint filed with them did not take action. As we stood and watched the animals under the thick sheeting we understood that we needed to act immediately since, if the weather was hot the next day, the dogs would all perish. Thus we made our way to the XVIII District police station where we filed an official complaint against an unknown perpetrator. Thanks to immediate action by the Police Commissioner they arrived at the seen shortly with a number of police vehicles. The owner of the dogs had in the meantime arrived back at the site (he had been removing pregnant bitches) and to our horror wanted to set the guard dogs free whereupon the police removed him from the scene in hand-cuffs. The fire brigade arrived following this to help , as the dogs confined to their tight cages were not only hard to access, but extremely aggressive as well, constituting a danger to humans.
Luckily these dogs were rescued in one afternoon, however until closure of the proceedings the dogs cannot be re-homed or neutered, thus taking up space from all other existing and potential rescue dogs.
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