“Dog De-adoption” in Gödöllő

This week has been thrilling, exciting and filled with many crazy things happening all over the place. Back in January, the so-called Állatvédőrség and the League had to face a situation that was extraordinary – even for as experienced people as they are in the means of pet rescue.

Prelude:

52 puppies were found at a breeding facility, kept in bunny cages, in tiny spaces. First, as normal procedure requests, they called a professional to the spot, in this case a vet, who declared the situation to be animal abuse. Then, police forces had to be summoned to begin official investigation, they took photos and a report has been filed against the lady responsible for inappropriate pet keeping and breeding without license and permission.

Normally, policemen would take the dogs from the place as evidence, and they would get a decision about where to keep the puppies from the Bureau.

They, however, decided not to take them but to hand them over to the pet rescue forces that were arriving with vans and cages suitable for pet transport. The Association for Pet Rescue (Állatvédőrség) did not have the equipment needed to transport, so the Pet Rescue League was called to the spot to help them with carrying the pets to a safer place.

This might already sound as an ordinary kind of pet-rescue fairytale with loads of rescued puppies, but I can even top the idyll. The puppies were later given to brand new owners, the whole procedure has been made legal, with papers, all dogs with new ID chips and full license, thus making them “go legal”. After placing these sweethearts was the time when everything started to fall out of place.

According to the Head of Communication of Állatvédőrség, Anita Tornóczky, misinformation caused police forces to act based on documentation that was not even properly made. Police forces from Gödöllő actually visited the owners of two puppies claiming that they need to take the dogs, as they were - after all – parts of an investigation process and should be treated as evidence, like a pair of socks or fingerprints.

But let’s not forget that these puppies – legally now belonged to the families they were given to, with legal papers and ID chips and medication paid for either by the League, Állatvédőrség or the owners.  Some of these families consisted of parents with little children; one new owner was a pregnant woman in her 9^th month, and elder people. Police forces however did not hesitate to actually go and grab the puppies , forcibly taking them out of the hands of two owners. Then was the time when an owner, an lady called Állatvédőrség, sobbing like mad, to tell them about what was happening.

The whole charade began when the Pet Rescue forces started questioning the actions made by the police – and quite right they were. The biggest issue was not the case of the action of taking the dogs away, the pregnant mother even refused to give the puppy away, saying she would rather get arrested than to hand over her dog, but considering her situation, the officers decided to file a report against her instead of taking her into custody. The main issue was the three month-old puppy, that was not old enough  to take any kind of vaccines yet, and was anyway taken to Cegléd, to a facility, similar to the Pet Shelter in Gyömrő. The problem is that the puppy had no protection from the viruses or sicknesses that might come up at a facility containing many grown dogs, and it might even kill the animal. This was, for example one thing that inclined that the police forces, acting upon order, had not thought about. The professionalism of the legal forces is to be questioned from this point on. The puppy was taken there nevertheless, and it is highly possible that if it does get an infection or some kind of disease, it might not even be able to survive.

The reason for policemen to take away the dogs was – reportedly – based upon the orders of the Bureau of Pest county), but the serial number of the injunction was missing from the papers, so this particular injunction that was on the paper might not even existed at all. This is the conclusion after the members of Állatvédőrség contacted the Bureau, and they said that they had no idea what was actually happening to the dogs and upon what orders the policemen were carrying out their morally and legally questionable actions. Citizen Law says that the puppies already belonged to the new owners as they were in possession of legal papers, but unfortunately Hungarian Law does not make a distinction between living and unanimated evidence, concluding that they could even put the dogs in bags, or anywhere anytime as they were part of an earlier and still ongoing investigation.

The problematic part is that the police forces were – back at the breeding spot – given all the data needed about the dogs: the number of them, color, breeds, gender etc. 

For conclusion, make sure to come back next week - I can give a full report on how and where the case is going at the moment.