Formation of the APF		Mission, Aims, Objectives		Policy		Contacts
	STATEMENT OF POLICY BREDING, ACQUIRING, RE-HOMING, STERILIZATION AND POPULATION CONTROL (accepted June 18 2006) 1. Breeding and acquiring The APF is opposed to the non-planned breeding and impulsive acquiring of puppies and kittens. The APF proclaims that the educated owners don’t want to breed their animals and therefore undertake proper sterilization. The APF also claims that the prospective owners, who have reached minimal level of humane education, prefer to take left animals, in spite of looking for puppies and kitten offered by the breeders and dealers. The APF accepts that well kept animals must be marked with transponders and included in some kind of register (national or private). The public attention must be engaged towards the destiny of the grown up animals, who often lose their owners; must be popularized among the owners and prospective owners responsible attitude for acquiring and breeding of young animals, practice of the re-homing, sterilization and registration. The humane education could be performed mainly by school programmes and spreading of printed materials. The APF adopts the educational activity as an effective tool, independent of the complicated situation in Bulgaria. 2. Re-homing The APF pinpoints the need of helping and increasing the re-homing of the left and lost animals by the practice of sheltering. By the sheltering of abandoned animals must be increased the interest for grown up dogs and cats; by collection and re-homing the great number of left animals must be discouraged the home breeding as a wrong practice, and must be saved the life and normal living conditions of more abandoned animals. The animals with apparent home origin, found in the streets as lost, could be taken to the shelter and announced as rescued. The APF having in mind the specific situation in Sofia, accepts the practice of no-kill sheltering. 3. Sterilization The APF stresses the need of help for the owners by providing of quality, fast and cheep sterilization, rehabilitation, marking and registration of their animals. By providing available service must be established the early aged and proper sterilization as an accepted practice, and must be increased the prevalence of the sterilized female animals over non-sterilized. Marked animals could be more probably found in cases of lost or theft and the cases of mass stealing of such animals could be given to the police and prosecutors. In cases that need, free of charge service must be provided. The APF stresses that helping the responsible owners will bring good results in Bulgaria, in spite of the complicated situation. 4. Registration, taxation and licensing The APF strongly supports eventual implication of national system of identification and registration of the cats and dogs, and licensing of the breeders and dealers. This control will reduce the movement of the animals, associated with their marketing, acquiring, theft, losing, abandoning and abusing. The APF supports eventual implication of the registration fee, taxation of the possession of non-sterilized animals. Paying of a serious tax will definitely restrict the breeding and marketing of cheep puppies and kittens. The enforcement of a strict control is possible only in conditions of restricted home breeding. It is practically impossible for any regional veterinary service to register hundreds of animals every day. 5. Stray Control The APF supports the adequate control of over-population by Trap-Neuter-Return/TNR programs, registration of the neighbourhood animals, establishment of fenced kennels for the neighbourhood dogs, and standard sheltering & reduction of the number of newly appearing unwanted dogs. The solitary implication of this control, without restriction of the home breeding and enforcement of official control over all activities, concerning cats and dogs, will reach only temporary results. The restriction of existing over-population does not prevent the perpetual appearing of new unwanted animals from the homes, business yards and construction fields.