The Scandal of the Canili Lager

The following text comes to me from an Italian lady who is involved in the voluntary network in Italy and I am happy to publish it. I have only just learned about the canili lager and it is horrifying.

In 1991 a new and potentially groundbreaking animal welfare law was passed by the Italian Parliament making it effectively illegal to euthanize a healthy pet animal. This opened up a big question: what should be done with the stray and abandoned dogs on Italian streets? Could dog pounds and local councils cope with the increased number of abandoned animals and their offspring?

To alleviate the problem, the Government allocated specific funds to new, private organisations for the upkeep of the animals. The main concern was food but also vaccinations and veterinary care.

Although this scheme initially helped, it didn’t take into account the potential for scamming. The way was open for unscrupulous people to get as many dogs as possible, declare their number to the government, set up a kennels in the middle of nowhere with no road signs, and start collecting free money. And so the canili lager were born.

The quality of life for the animals in the canili lager varies. Some are disgusting with total disregard for animals. An example is the Cicerale scandal, where dead and sick animals had to share cages with living ones, males and females were kept together resulting in countless puppies being born and then dying, eaten by other starving dogs. Others keep the dogs in their cages and clean and feed them once a day, but these poor creatures are never walked for their entire lives, and never seen by anyone. Adoption means the end of a source of free money, and although the adoptee could easily be replaced, why go through all the hassle?

Some canili are council-run in the middle of big cities. More animals are adopted, but never the old ones. In others a large number of animals are kept  in one big fenced area, with nothing to do all day but attack each other, so many older dogs are killed. Other places force dogs are forced to live knee-deep in mud and excrement, or they are shot or beaten and left to die or survive without any medical care. 

The real problem of course is the attitude of some Italians towards animals. It’s quite common for a family to get a puppy for Christmas and then abandon it on a busy motorway come the summer holidays to avoid paying for boarding costs. In some parts of the centre and south, abandonment is so rife that whole colonies of stray dogs roam the streets, not even the canili lager have the space for them. Some of these dogs are friendly, having been raised in a family, and approach the locals hoping for a bit of food and comfort and instead are beaten to death, poisoned or attacked and killed by feral dogs.

The beautiful island of Sardinia, summer haunt of countless celebrities, has some particularly horrific cases.  Elderly dogs have been wrapped in plastic bags and left to suffocate in rubbish skips. Two young dogs were found with their back legs tied together with wire. They’d been like that since puppies, fed but immobilized so their back legs had no muscle at all, and were unable to bear the dogs’ weight once they were released from this torture. The list is endless. The only association looking out for these grossly traumatized animals is the Rifugio Fratelli Minori, part of the Lida association in Olbia, Sardinia. The only hope for adoption of these animals come from other regions of Italy, and links with animal associations providing rehoming in Germany.

Of course, not all Italians behave this way and a growing body of what are known as ‘volunteers’ are desperately trying to change the situation for millions of animals in dire need. Those operating in southern and central Italy are particularly busy. First of all, they give food and veterinary care to dogs found in the streets. If they can’t rehome those animals then they try to contact other associations, especially in the north. Adoptions from pounds are starting to increase in these regions thus freeing up space for a newcomer. Some of the volunteers taking strays from canili lager find dogs who have gone into a cage at 6 months and never left it until they were 13-14 years of age.

Other volunteers take photos of dogs, images grabbed during a fleeting visit which they then circulate on a growing number of Internet adoption sites, the only chance of escape these poor animals have. Volunteers also visit a variety of private and public council run pounds, especially those out of the main big cities, providing, if permitted, to take the dogs out for a short walk every week.  This is not allowed in the vast majority of pounds, and dogs are left to spend their entire days in damp concrete cages with no stimulation, no ventilation, no heating, scarce cleaning, covered with parasites during the hot months, the only form of bedding a plank of wood on the floor and sometimes not even that. 

These volunteers are the only hope for these dogs to ever know a family and the joy of freedom. They receive no funding, no pay, no government backing of any kind and all they rely on is their own underground, heavily ostracized network. Often they find themselves having to fight with the owners of the private canili lager to be allowed to take pictures, let alone take the dogs for a walk. Anything at all that will improve the dogs’ lives has to be negotiated, while the owners do their best to get the volunteers out, so that their business revenue can continue without further complications. Their efforts and bravery can’t be underestimated as all too often the canili lager owners are dishonest, threatening people. 

But the volunteers are slowly spreading their message of responsibility, making people take a different perspective on adoptions from pounds. They advocate neutering, promote anti-abandonment campaigns and push for greater local council response to cases of extreme animal neglect and cruelty.

Slowly some of these dogs are finding homes, but often it is the puppies and the disabled dogs. The ones that remain are the old ones. So please think about them if you are considering adopting a dog. You can find some older dogs on the adoption pages of this site.

Links:
http://micificio.altervista.org/legge.htm
map of the canili lager
http://www.lidaolbia.it/
http://www.myspace.com/lidaolbia