Hate fashion

Some new fad has come. Fashion in the most negative sense of the word. Fashion for hatred of animals. I am not able to understand it and it raises my (and many, many dog ​​owners) deep opposition to it.

What’s the matter? It is about planting sausage with rat poison in the streets and in parks, sausages stuffed with nails or bread with broken glass . In Poznań, where we live, such incidents happen regularly, spreading fear among dog lovers. And I know that the problem concerns not only Poznań, but many cities, especially large ones. The amount of information about such incidents in Poland is terrifying. Recently, in Poznań, the poison was even placed on … a dog run. A place that is especially intended for animals and is fenced. The runway was empty for the next few days. How much hate it takes to deliberately doom an animal to a painful death. Why do dogs bother someone so much? And most of all – to whom?

The law in Poland provides for penalties (up to 3 years in prison) for the abuse of animals. But it doesn’t matter if the statutory punishment is severe or not (still not severe enough in my opinion), because no one has ever been caught and punished for poisoning animals in public areas. How many dogs still have to die for this to end? Each time the media informs that “the matter is being dealt with by the police”, but never from this “dealing” with anything. I always wonder if it is impossible to check street monitoring or ask local residents in search of the perpetrator. The more situations where no one was punished, the more insolent in action. This gives the perpetrators a feeling of impunity. Recently, I read that on one of the streets of Wrocław, a note was posted with the information that dogs pollute the street, and therefore poison was put on it. Of course, the matter was not resolved. Is it really the problem not to clean up after the dogs? Even if so, does that mean the animal must be killed? What an absurdity.

You can join local doggie groups on Facebook. Usually, this is where the warnings about the “poisoned” lines appear first. You can put a muzzle on your dog. You can go for walks with the dog, nervously surveying the entire area in search of poison. But that is not the point. It should not be that we are constantly trembling for fear for his health and life.

There is no easy and quick solution here. Ending this grotesque probably requires a lot of cooperation between people (and not only dog ​​owners) and the police. First, if someone suspects or has seen someone planting poisoned food, they should react and report the matter to the police. And in our society, two attitudes reign: the first – “I don’t want to have problems”, the second – “it won’t do anything anyway.” If we don’t act, it really won’t do anything. Second, if someone spots any food that is suspicious, they should clean it up and throw it away. It really costs nothing and you can save somebody’s canine friend.

Meanwhile, watch out for our dogs . If we only notice that the dog eats something suspicious or feels worse, let’s go to the vet quickly – the earlier we react, the greater the chance of recovery. It’s also a good idea to train your dog to say ‘no’, and use it whenever your dog runs up to something suspicious in the street. This will be especially useful when the dog is loose and we cannot leash it away from the find. This is what we are working on and we recommend an instructional video of our favorite trainer, Piotr Wojtkow, on this topic. You can find him at johndog.pl.

Together with Bajzel, we wish you safe walks!