Poland | Silesia | Meeting with Mayor of Myszkow

Our team in Poland went to Myszkow in Silesia region to learn more about their method of reducing number of homeless dogs in the shelter. Myszków is one of very few municipalities which have resolved this problem scientifically. They started in 2010, when the current Mayor won the elections. At that time there were almost 300 homeless dogs in the shelter, half of which were puppies. Due to some legal issues they had to close the shelter. The Mayor was facing a big problem and solved it by using a totally new strategy based mainly on adoption, finding owners of roaming dogs, obligatory neutering & microchipping of dogs in the shelter, financing neutering & microchipping of owned dogs and working very close with the shelter in Zawiercie (two employees). All these activities synergistically led to the number of animals in the shelter decreasing every year. In 2017 they caught 90 stray dogs, 50% of which were returned to the owners. Most of the remaining ones were adopted. From the beginning of 2018, Myszkow located only 35 dogs in the shelter and only 4 are still there. The other ones have new homes already. Our team was taken to the dog shelter in Zawiercie. This place looks nice and is well maintained. The dogs have a lot of space and a playground. There is a special zone for puppies and for the old and the weakest dogs. We are very impressed of the well-organized team with a positive attitude, starting with the Mayor, the Commander of the City Guard who supervises realization of the dog homelessness prevention programme, and finally of big empathy of the staff working in the shelter. We hope this example will help us convince municipalities in swietokrzyskie region to implement a similar strategy.