There is no federal law on domestic and urban animals in Russia. The first, and also the last and unsuccessful attempt to pass such a law was made ten years ago, and the situation has since become critical. People have a tense relationship with animals: sometimes the animals attack, sometimes the animals themselves suffer from cruel treatment.
The new federal law should become an animal constitution, says Natalia Komarova, chairman of the Duma Committee on Natural Resources, Nature Management and Ecology: it will spell out animal rights and human duties. The law will be based on the European Convention for the Protection of Pets, to which Russia has not joined. In the future, the position of Commissioner for Animal Rights should be introduced, as, for example, is done in Germany. “We are looking at Europe, most attentively at England,” says Komarova. “After all, they joke about the English that they love their cats and dogs more than children.”
The new law on animals was lobbied by animal rights activists, and ordinary citizens, and folk artists, says one of the developers of the project, the chairman of the Fauna Russian Society for the Protection of Animals, Ilya Bluvshtein. Everyone is tired of the situation in which everything related to urban animals is outside the legal field. “For example, a lonely woman called today – she was admitted to a hospital in another city, she cannot move, and her cat was locked in her apartment. I can’t resolve this issue – I don’t have the right to break down the door and get the cat out,” Bluvshtein explains.
Natalia Smirnova from St. Petersburg does not have any pets, but she also wants the law to finally be passed. She doesn’t really like the fact that when she goes for a run around her house in the Kalininsky district, she always takes a gas canister with her – from the dogs that run after her with loud barking. “Basically, these are not homeless, but owner’s dogs, which for some reason are without a leash,” says Smirnova. “If it weren’t for the spray can and the good reaction, I would have had to give injections for rabies several times already.” And the owners of the dogs invariably answer her to go in for sports in another place.
The law should fix not only the rights of animals, but also the obligations of owners – to clean up after their pets, to put muzzles and leashes on dogs. Moreover, according to the plan of the legislators, these things should be monitored by a special unit of the municipal police. “Now people think that pets are their own business: as much as I want, I get as much as I want, then I do with them,” says deputy Komarova. “The law will oblige to treat animals humanely and properly contain them so that they do not interfere with other people.”
The point is the lack of not only zoo laws, but also zoo culture, lawyer Yevgeny Chernousov agrees: “Now you can get a lion and walk it on the playground. You can walk with fighting dogs without a muzzle, do not clean up after them.”
It got to the point that in the spring, more than half of the Russian regions held pickets demanding the creation and adoption of animal laws at least at the local level. In Voronezh, they proposed to pass a law prohibiting walking dogs on beaches and in public places. In St. Petersburg, they plan to ban children under 14 from walking dogs, because even an adult will not keep dogs of some breeds. In Tomsk and Moscow, they want to link the number of pets with living space. It is even supposed that a network of state shelters for dogs will be created according to the European model. The state also wants to control the activities of already existing private shelters. Their owners are not happy with this prospect.
Tatyana Sheina, the hostess of the shelter and a member of the Public Council for Pets in St. Petersburg, believes that the state should not specify which animals to keep in the shelter, and which ones to euthanize or send to the street. She is convinced that this is the concern of the shelter owners association, which she is currently working on.
Lyudmila Vasilyeva, the owner of the Alma shelter in Moscow, speaks even more harshly: “We, animal lovers, have been solving the problem of homeless animals ourselves for so many years, as best we could: we found, fed, treated, accommodated, the state did not help us in any way. So don’t control us! If you want to solve the problem of homeless animals, run a neutering program.”
The issue of regulating the population of stray dogs is one of the most controversial. The Duma project proposes mandatory sterilization; they will be able to destroy a cat or dog only if a special veterinary examination proves that the animal is seriously ill or dangerous to human life. “What is happening now, for example, in Kemerovo, where money is paid from the city budget to organizations that shoot stray dogs, is unacceptable,” Komarova says harshly.
By the way, the plans include the creation of a single database of missing animals. All pet dogs and cats will be microchipped so that if they get lost, they can be distinguished from stray ones.
Ideally, the drafters of the law would like to introduce a tax on animals, as in Europe. For example, dog breeders would then make clearer plans – they would have to pay for each puppy. While there is no such tax, animal rights activist Bluvshtein proposes to oblige breeders to submit applications from buyers for future offspring. Dog breeders are outraged. “How can a person in our unstable life guarantee that he will certainly take a puppy for himself,” Larisa Zagulova, chairman of the Bull Terrier Breeders Club, is indignant. “Today he wants – tomorrow the circumstances have changed or there is no money.” Her pathos: again, let not the state, but the professional community of dog breeders follow the dog’s affairs.
The Zagulova club already has such experience. “If there is a “bulka” in the shelter,” Zagulova says, “they call from there, we pick him up, contact the owner – and it’s quite easy to figure out the owner of a thoroughbred dog, and then we either return him or find another owner.”
Deputy Natalya Komarova dreams: when the law is passed, Russian animals will live like in Europe. True, it descends from heaven, but one problem still remains: “Our people are not morally prepared for the fact that animals should be treated in a civilized way.”
Already this year, schools and kindergartens will begin to hold special class hours dedicated to animals, they will invite animal rights activists, and take children to the circus. The idea is that parents will also be imbued through their children. And then it will be possible to impose a tax on pets. To become just like in Europe.