why-animals-do-the-thing:

mad-hare:

Okay
1. This isn’t rescue, these dogs are being treated like some fad with an expected huge wait list and one hell of a backstory to pull on the heart strings
2. After the dog flu incident how is this still happening
3. Potentially interbred with wolves, just what we need

4. Also why send them to the US? Does no, closer, European, country NOT want these dogs? Why on earth not?
5. After 32 years, these dogs likely will have a lot issues from living wild that will not make them not great pets? They’ve been surviving in the wild and may be similar to pariah type dogs? Ie amazing problem solvers, escape artists, a challenge to house? Idk that much about dogs tho

Thanks for the tag on this one. I feel like this is a good example of “fad rescue.” There’s a whole lot of debate on if we should be importing rescue dogs from other countries while the American south still has a massive stray dog population, but the truth of it is that people love a sob story and animals with “social cache”, and most people don’t want the hounds that are plentiful in the south or the tons of pitties and chihuahuas needing homes in New England. 

 And yes, you’re right, there totally could be a worry of disease. Any time there’s an import, there’s risk: although good quarantine and veterinarian protocol can prevent that, shady rescues often circumvent those rules – especially with puppies – because they’re catering to immediate demand and because puppies grow up fast and aren’t as cute after a multiple-week quarantine. It wasn’t just the Korean meat dogs and dog flu that have been an issue lately – puppies rescued after the hurricanes last year were found to be positive for leptospirosis after being adopted out. Not all rescues mess with this protocol, but I’m still highly suspicious of any sensationalized international dog rescue until they’re proven reliable and appropriately responsible. 

As to why they’re coming to the US? It’s not clear. The researcher in me says it’s likely that the founders of the project are American – this is a very American thing to do, go overseas and help / rescue feral dogs – and so it would make sense they’d “bring them home.” The skeptic in me says that America really loves these sob story dogs and it’s a great way to get more visibility and funding for their project, because social media will eat it up. It’s probably somewhere in-between those two extremes. 

I wouldn’t be too worried about these puppies being potentially bred with wolves – my guess is the worry is more about protecting the wolf bloodlines in the area. I don’t know if they’d have developed a lot of the pariah-dog like behaviors in 30 years, that’s a question for @streetdogmillionaires​, but since they’re being rescued as puppies they’ll at least be able to be socialized and people aren’t dealing with adult dogs that have learned more survival behavior that aren’t appropriate in a house. 

It sounds like the CFF is doing good work in general, though, vaccinating the dogs against rabies and spaying / neutering them before letting them go free. What confuses me is how inconsistent the messaging about how many dogs there are in the zone. The home page of the Clean Futures Fund site says there are 250 stray dogs in Chernobyl; later in their website it says 500; in the 2018 update it says they treated 350 dog in 2017 are over 1000 animals to treat, for a total of 1350 animals in the area. Media articles about the project say 750, one article says 900. My original guess was that this is either a game of telephone or a case of well-meaning over-exaggeration by reporters, but I can’t explain why the numbers on the project’s website are so inconsistent. I know dogs breed fast, but those are all radically different populations. 

The only article I can find on the actual adoption of these dogs is this one, which is Ukranian, but legible enough with Google Translate. It sounds like the plan is to bring these 12 puppies over after a two month quarantine, and then the CFF will bring them to America to find homes. No other information about how they’ll be placed – so the big media articles are really more hype than reality. It does note that they’re hoping to bring about 200 dogs over, eventually.