ROLDA works tirelessly to rescue homeless dogs in south east Romania. As part of our work, we proactively reduce the number of strays by running multiple sterilisation campaigns addressed to dogs owned by people with low/no income from rural communities. The sterilization cost includes: preparation before surgery, IV anesthesia, surgery, post-surgery treatment. Microchiping costs include the implantation of the microchip and registering it in the RECS national dogs' database.
Romania has 2.5 million strays and to believe you can save them all is sadly utopic. Many of these dogs will suffer and die, hungry and alone - the victims of people's ignorance. ROLDA was born as a group of animal lovers determined to save as many animals in need as possible. Fifteen years have passed and we have already helped more than 20,000 animals - an amazing rate of 3.65 new animals helped every day in all these years!
Presently it is against Romanian law to release these strays back on the streets, so ROLDA spays and neuters street dogs when there's room for new dogs at our shelter. Dogs that have an owner are spayed or neutered at no cost to the owner and microchipped or recorded in the National Registry for Owned Dogs (aka RECS).
The benefits of ROLDA'sterilisation campaign were three fold: 1. It prevented roaming pets from adding their offspring to the problem 2. It prevented families from abandoning their pets because they could now afford sterilisation and microchipping 3. Microchipping dog prevents future abandonment, because the owner is more likely to be identified and dealt with under Romanian law
This project has provided additional documentation in a DOCX file (projdoc.docx).