| Until 1990 in Bulgaria there was a restrictive control over the acquisition of dogs, which prevented the population increase. Since 1990 the unrestricted acquisition and careless breeding of companion and guard dogs have become a tradition. According to the "Dog's Trust" findings the number of dogs to that of people in Europe is 1:8. Therefore we assume that at the present Bulgarians hold an approximate number of 1,000,000 dogs and 1,000,000 cats. The peculiarity of both cat and dog populations in Sofia and rest parts of Bulgaria is their striking inconstancy. Their makeup shifts very dynamically and the animal’s average lifespan is relatively low. Year in, year-out, Sofia city has been repopulated with quite a number of young pet animals. On the unregulated nationwide market are constantly offered and promptly dump for next to nothing or free an enormous number of unregistered puppies and kittens offered by the home breeders. In people’s backyards domestic and neighbourhood cats are reproducing unrestrictly. Also cross-bred dogs living in the construction fields and business yards are reproducing unrestrictly. Meantime the already grownups on a large-scale are quietly disappearing. The fundamental problem of the populations as we see it is the excessive breeding of owned cats and dogs. Very seldom you may find a owned female that has not given birth to an offspring or few. In reality most of the pets in Sofia city are own by candid people, kids included. The painstakingly proper attitude towards the animals coupled with the frivolous one towards breeding them are demonstrated in numerous ads placed allover town and media in seeking for a match, offering offspring or giving away for secondary adoption grown ones. THE ILLFATED HOME BREEDING DERIVES MAINLY FROM A POOR INFORMATION AND WIDESPREAD DELUSIONS AMONG PEOPLE INVOLVED. Here we are highlighting three important factors fuelling to the frivolous light-minded attitude towards the breeding and dispensing of young animals. - It’s a widespread misconception that giving birth is making females healthier. Many of the owners who we’ve discussed that myth with were maintaining that their view is formed and based on a veterinarian advice. - There is no infrastructure encouraging re-homing and sterilization. The mass demand for pups and kittens by accidental candidates acting on an impulse is a live ongoing thing. But their fate as unwanted grownups is left out of the society’s scope. The pet owners assume that there are enough number of serious candidates for the posterity of their animals, and that owned animals are not the source of their own overpopulation. - There are no practice of surveying movement of the animals. In Sofia tens of thousand owned animals stay unregistered and untagged. To the society en masse is incomprehensible the fact that kept animals and their offspring are amounting to well over a million of each species. For instance - owners of outdoor living cats are treating them as a individual, domestic specimens and tolerating their unrestricted reproduction; in cases of mass disappearance of such animals people usually assume that they’ve "split or just moved to an other location". |
|||||||||