A good deed for Xmas...give an abandoned dog a home!

Although there are now laws aimed at protecting animals from cruelty etc - and that (in theory) will punish those that are responsible - or that abandon them -  in practice they are very rarely applied! (Nothing new there then.....) It is the law that says animals can't be put down for as long as they are healthy or treatable...so it is not so much that vets are being awkward, they are obeying the law.  I am sure that some do what they can on the quiet but.... yes the roving wild packs of dogs that are certainly a danger, for which there is a  strong arguement for putting them down humanely before they attack and injure a person - and in many instances, it would also save them from the poor quality of life that many endure until they are either shot by a local farmer, or run over by a car!  That said, many of the "canile communale" are awful places...terribly overcrowded (some have 3 or 4 times as many animals as they were designed for) and often with insufficient funds to properly feed and care for the animals.  My vets (there are 6 of them in the practice) volunteer at the local canile twice a week to do what they can - for free- (they also help out clients who have little money to spend on vet bills, but lots of love for their pets!),  There are rescue centres run by volunteers, but donating money to spend on animals is not high up the list of worthy causes for most Italians.  My vet told me that there is a law that says that for every x thousand people (I don't know the details) a commune is supposed to have a canile - (and that state or perhaps European funding is available) and that where a commune has less than that number of residents, they can link up with neighbouring comune...but few bother, and nobody says anything!  There is also a problem with funds being waylaid by the malavita apparently.  The funding provided is, let's say 3 Euro per dog per day (it may be more or less, I've forgotten).  Once the canile is up and running, "someone" comes along and says unless you give me 2 Euro of that money we will do x, y, z......  Striscia la notizia - has also done several exposès about the whole problem.  For those that don't know, it is a popular programme, humourous and full of satire and irony, but which  also goes "undercover"  to expose all sorts of things - from lousy / corrupt kennels, to the "maghi" (clairvoyants) that appear on TV, lawyers "arranging" papers for non EU citizens wanting to stay in Italy, the state of roads, new roads that received EU funding but have never been finished, etc etc etc. Actually - the spaying and neutering of cats and dogs is usually available free or in some regions, at a much reduced cost, but the ASL vets(ASL is equivalent of NHS) - although my own vet says that they are often more like butchers than surgeons.   That, however is not why most Italians don't have their animals "done".... I can't tell you how many times I have been told that it is "against God / nature" (but apparently killing or abandoning the puppies / kittens is OK....) There is much to love about Italy...but sometimes I wonder why on earth they ever chose St Francis as the country's patron saint, when love of animals seems so low down on the list...   Oh well... The Rottweiler has apparently "gone" but we don't know how / where / when....    

Sorry if I upset you...I'm not saying that things are any better any where else...and of course there are vast numbers of Italians who love and adore their pets...but in rural areas, where the "norm" is to have working dogs rather than pets this is often not the case....and this is not only based on my observations, but also what the vets in the practice I go to (all Italian and from this area) say! And as St Francis spent a lot of time in Sabina (just next door to Umbria) it does seem somewhat ironic...that's all! Yes, a rottweiler is a big dog, and taking one on is a big responsibility...which is why I said I was looking for someone who could both afford it and have the space.  My point in this story (which just happens to be set here, but could equally well be set in the UK, USA or anywhere else in the world) is that it is hardly news that they ARE big dogs, and that the people who first took this dog home to an apartment should have thought of that before they did so...but having had it for a year, it is cruel and uncaring to simply say find it a home or it will be killed!   No country is perfect...if only!   There are lots of wonderful things about Italy, (I have lived here for many many years) and England too, where I come from, but both countries also have many things wrong with them....and I don't think that there is anything wrong in talking about something that is not ideal or perfect - I thought free speech was part of living in a democracy! Judging by your name you are Italian - so perhaps you too have seen the reports on striscia la notizie about the awful living conditions for dogs in many of the canile communale around the country?  Again, I am not saying that this ONLY happens in Italy - just that it does happen! So...auguri di buon anno...e non te lo prendere!