The headlines reported the awful news of an English lady mauled to death by a wild pack of dogs.
She apparently had her own dog with her at the time, allegedly a German shepherd type dog who ran away.
Obviously the poor lady was not in a position to be able to run away.
I have heard other local Bulgarians getting mauled by these stray dogs and the problem is not being solved
There are no vets available to safely neuter a dog and even if a vet was available, what Bulgarian could afford such a service?
Are there no volunteer/charity vets, mobile, to go round Bulgaria's villages to help solve or at least reduce this problem by giving a neutering solution?
The Bulgarians love their dogs, but what on earth do they do when their dogs mate?
A huge Bulgarian sheep dog has adopted me, she's only 7 months old and the boys are already coming round vying for best position on her!
Any ideas?
Any volunteer vets?
Please help, people are getting hurt and it's not the dogs fault, they are wild and packing and its freezing now with little or no food, they are starving hungry and by the sounds of it, human flesh is on the menu....
Please send help... someone!

http://www.beastsofthebalkans.com/bulgariandogs.html

There are a huge amount of online newspaper reports regarding this dreadful incident with the wild pack of dogs.
On further reading, it appears these may have not been the usual stray dogs we see every day, but instead a specially reared pack, bred to ravish.
The graphic description of how this British lady was ripped to shreds by these dogs is beyond belief.
Children witnessed this terrible crime.
PLEASE PLEASE SOMEONE OUT THERE HAS THE ABILITY TO ORGANISE MOBILE VETS TO HELP THIS IMPOVERISHED COUNTRY OVERCOME THIS PROBLEM AND HELP ENSURE THIS NEVER EVER HAPPENS TO ANOTHER HUMAN BEING AGAIN.
These dogs need a neutering scheme, vets need to be able to travel around to ALL the Bulgarian villages and help solve the problem before a child, lady, man gets hurt again.

Couldn't resist this thread and my heart breaks to read it.

We have the same problem in Russia. Estimates are around 30 thousand street dogs in Moscow alone, although, I must admit, most of them in the city are well fed by caring people (usually Grandmothers for some reason or other that take food to them). I do my best too, by saving all our leftovers and boiling it up into a big pan of stew and taking it to one of my local groups.

However, not everyone is a dog lover like myself and packs of street dogs can be very frightening especially when they sense that someone is nervous of them. I often read on our Expat site about foreigners that have been frightened by groups of street dogs that get very excited about their domestic rivals when out for some exercise.

So, despite numerous complaints, the Russian government does nothing to alleviate the problem. Their short-term answers are to send the Police to shoot them which in my book is completely inhumane and out of order, but who am I to argue!

The veterinary services say it is easier and cheaper to castrate the male dogs than to operate on the bitches, but no programme seems to be in force due to a lack of funds or interest - Moscow being one of the richest cities in the world these days.

I also have experience from Santarini in Greece where I once rescued a dog and where they have a programme of rehousing street dogs, mainly to the German tourists. However, with UK quarantine laws, you would have to be really dedicated to take a dog from mainland Europe.

So, did you ever make any progress with seeking veterinary assistance? I am not a vet, but would love to help in anyway I can, if I ever relocate down there. I do know that out in the sticks, locals will drown puppies and kittens at birth, something else I do not necessarily agree with, but they do not have enough money or food to feed all those hungry mouths and as you say, no vets to neuter the dogs.

Perhaps now that Bulgaria is part of the EU that some pressure can be brought from Brussels, but my fear is that this would result in another 'mass inhumane slaughter by shooting as opposed to euthanasia from a vet's needle.

Anyway, would be interested to know if you made any progress and more than happy to post a photo of some of our well fed street dogs resting in the summer sun in our communal yard.    

well no, no offers from vets yet!
but the vast majority of street dogs are very calm and lovely little things who do not harass anyone, so far, it seems like this was a rare yet violent episode.
after living in Thailand also for a while, they allow the cats and dogs karma to play its part in what happens to the animals
greece has a strict evil frequent program of placing poison down not just for the strays but for your pet animals too, they have been in the EU for quite some time and still dont give a you know what!
Bulgaria allows the cats dogs horses chickens cows donkeys to roam free with huge haystacks for winter feeding of the stray hay eaters and i have watched the patient Bulgarians feed a patient cat or dog from their own roll they were eating while sitting on a park bench!
today i was in the main Kardjali town and i watched a small cat wishing to go back into a building and a man walk calmly over to open the door for it before continuing on his merry way, the cat did have a colar on and was obviously not a street stray! lol

Gandi said 'You can judge a nation by how it treats its animals'

Yes, I had forgotten about the poisoning of animals in Greece. This was the fate of most of the strays on Santorini. Whilst the tourists are there, they're well fed, but when winter comes the animals starve and head into the hills to attack chickens and anything else they can find to eat. I was told that a lot of the strays are shot by the locals defending their livestock or poisoned. Not much of an outlook for a defenceless hungry animal is it.

For some strange reason, the street dogs of Pattaya didn't like me. I tried to make contact, but they just kept barking at me aggressively whilst I made a slow retreat. I have to think twice when in a country where rabies is about, not like the UK. However, these days, the treatment for suspected rabies is nowhere near as unpleasant as it used to be with injections into the stomach.  

oooer tad too graphic for my lion heart! lol

but yes the animals are ritually fed to a slow and extremely painful death, an unbelivable archaic practice that sealed greece's fate for me, i could not stomach losing one more screeming frothing at the mouth cat or dog or hear the screams of them enduring the lingering and slow pain of such an awful death

barbaric and one time i really hope what goes round comes round

i lost all the colonies that not only i regularly fed, not only never attacked a chicken, regularly caught the rats and mice now free to roam the streets of tourist greece with the potential of plague outbreak and filthy water not fit for consumption, but also those fantastic German vets provided me with plenty of catching baskets and free neutering service for any animal cat or dog male or female and all for FREE!

they even allowed me to purchase huge sacks of cat and dog food at trade price in order to keep going in my daily feeding frenzy!

the dogs that are tied to the trees to live out their lives on their own extretions end up having their food (when they are fed) thrown at them as they become so crazed and dehydrated, of course plenty of new cute puppies to replace them when they finally are released to doggy heaven!

yes I have seen how Bulgaria treat their animals and its heartwarming to me!

two red kittens have now taken possession of me and i know that short of getting run over or major illness that they stand every chance of living to ripe old age! Very comforting for me!

Luvitsa (Bulgarian for Lioness) Luv Its a Very Kind Animal Friendly Country known as Bulgaria!