My name is Mimi Mishevska and I run a community project in the mountains above Skopje in Northern Macedonia, as well as a small refuge for dogs and cats who were unable to survive alone on the streets.

The word Animal Welfare doesn’t exist in Macedonia, with an estimated half a million stray dogs and cats just in and around Skopje alone, where they can be found in high numbers in both urban and rural areas, falling prey to being run over by a tram or car to sustain horrific injuries, with others are subjected to the worst kinds of animal abuse – whilst some residents feed the strays, many others attack them. Myself and our rescue community have found dogs that have been tortured, poisoned, hung, shot, stabbed, raped, set on fire, purposely run over, dragged behind cars. bludgeoned to death, mouths and limbs are tied up or mutilated and left to die a slow and agonising death. One local dog death, a friendly, loving stray called Idriz, was hacked to death by a man with an axe in the middle of a busy shopping street outside a cafe with children present – we have video footage of Idriz’s painful last breaths. Idriz’s crime? He barked at the man. The police were not interested, and the criminal still roams free.

One of the biggest hurdles my rescue community face in tackling the stray population numbers, is that no one in the West seems to have heard of Macedonia or realise what an appalling animal rights record we have here – it is far worse than Romania, with animal abuse atrocities happening every day in every village, town and city, in public view, as there are no animal protection laws or zoo police to impose any penalties.  Without western awareness and influence, the Governmental Departments can continue to ignore the massive environmental health problem that we have in our country, and the situation continues to spiral out of control.

The dog catchers sent out by the dog pounds, are brutal, they pay a commission per dog to “dog catchers” who brutally catch the street dogs and puppies on catch poles, dragging them long distances by their necks along the tarmac, often breaking their legs in order to shove them into small crates. Once a dog is in a shelter the dog catcher gets paid, so no dog is safe, there is a price on every dog and puppy’s head – it doesn’t matter if they die in there.  Our dog pounds are described as pure hell on earth, they are horrific places of torture and rife with disease; really, they are just prisons, and no one is stopping the brutality. The dogs and puppies are rarely given food or water and certainly no medication. The guards have free reign to do whatever they want, so the dog pounds attract sadistic minded employees. Dogs and puppies shake in fear when they see their “carers”. Many of the dogs are killed by the guards and the killing is not done humanely – usually they are clubbed to death.

And it’s not just dogs that are subjected to this horror. Cats and kittens die on the streets from disease; many kittens are blind due to untreated eye infections. Cats and puppies are often used as bait in dog fighting. Horses and donkeys are subjected to a life of misery and suffering; used and abused until they collapse; abandoned at the side of the road to starve to death because they can no longer walk. Northern Macedonia is also home to the horror that is Bitola Zoo; a zoo where emaciated animals are incarcerated and neglected; a zoo where live, stray dogs and cats, are used as food for the big cats there.

The local governments are supposed to run neutering programmes, however, they do not do the surgeries properly, and many spayed female dogs simply bleed out, because they use single layer stitches, which burst and the internal organs spill out. The dog pounds here, are a one way ticket – dogs go in, there is no rehoming programme, dogs are never seen again, yet the numbers in there do not increase.   These governmental bodies refuse to give any NGO’s the licence needed to run their own Trap Neuter Return programmes, because it would mean their funding (that is diverted elsewhere) would be cut, so it is left to our own local communities to do what we can, with our own small personal incomes.

Our animal rescue community try to spay/neuter as many dogs, puppies, cats and kittens as we can, and rescue any that are too weak to survive the street conditions, yet it’s like putting a plaster on a big open wound. Without consistent and sustainable neutering and adoption programmes, we simply cannot stem the flow of dogs and puppies being put to the street by the element of our society who allow their own unsterilized animals to breed twice a year unchecked, and then put the offspring to the streets.  Nor can we rehome the ones that we have saved from the streets as there is just not enough money or awareness to do so, resulting in a rescue bottleneck where no more animals can be saved, as there is nowhere for them to go, so there is no way to release the pressure valve. They are born into a never-ending cycle of suffering and neglect. We as animal rights activists are fighting a losing battle.

And now, to add to all of our stressors, with rising food costs, I can no longer afford to feed the rescues that I have in my shelter, nor pay the vet bills for our community project – I desperately need help to pay our 5,000 EUR vet debt and 15,000 EUR food debt, so that we can at least continue to care for our community animals.

Will you help?

Help can come in many forms, not just donations, but most importantly, sharing and publicity, raising awareness will eventually lead to foreign aid and support eventually arriving from a large World NGO – this is what we so desperately need to raise awareness and put pressure on our Government to implement change and create sustainable programs to control the stray populations.  It is the only way that we will ever be able to improve the environmental health of our ecosystem, and in turn the health and welfare of both humans and animals in our country.

Mimi x