06/20/05 Don't Leave Me

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Action of Animal Friends and NOKIA Cro-a-Porter: Celebrities in a campaign against abandonment of companion animals before the upcoming summer vacations

For the fourth year in a row Animal Friends continues its educational campaign "Family at a Seaside, Dog in the Streets?!" aiming to protect companion animals before the upcoming summer vacations. This year's campaign "Don't Leave Me" is organized in cooperation with the City Department for Agriculture and Forest Management, the City Shelter Dumovec and NOKIA Cro-a-Porter.

Owing to the neglegence of their guardians, every year during summer vacations animals which become stray overcrowd the streets, where they wander hungry and thirsty, often meeting their end under automobile wheels.

To raise the citizen awareness concerning this issue, Animal Friends launches a summer campaign "Don't Leave Me." Among other things, this campaign will be marked by the billboards, which will feature Croatian celebrities Maja Vucic and Nikolina Pisek with their dogs. They will invite citizens to act responsibly towards their four-legged friends, thus giving support to this campaign. The photographs for the billboards will be shot by a famous photographer Sandra Vitaljic (ELLE, COSMOPOLITAN, STORY), whilst Viktor Drago will have a role of an art director.

The shooting of photographs, open to the media, will take place on Monday, June 20, 2005, in HRG Studio, Ulica Hrvatske bratske zajednice 4, in the National and University Library at 5 P.M.

Animals are not our toys, they are our lifetime obligation and responsibility.

A letter to the media about the abandoning of a dog, June 24, 2005

Dear Sirs,

We are contacting you with today's news, photographs and our condemnation of abandoning of a dog by an unknown citizen.

In a park at the crossroad of Horvacanska ulica and Hrvatski sokol ulica at Jarun lake yesterday, June 23, 2005, around 10 P.M., according to the statement of the workers in the near-by news-stand a dog was left tied to the bench with an improvised leash. The employees at the news-stand thought the owner of the dog had gone to the café so they didn't react right away. However, today the dog was still tied to the same place and they noticed a message they couldn't have seen in the dark the night before.

The dog was lying in the grass under the bench, among trash, exhausted, hungry and so scared that he didn't allow anyone to come near. One of the passers-by called the dog-catchers who had carefully unleashed him and drove him away around noon.

The dog is now placed in a veterinary center in Heinzelova ulica. We invite the citizens to provide a home for him as soon as possible, as well as the other dogs with the similar tragic destinies, caused by carelessness and irresponsibility of their guardians.

We strongly condemn these repeated cases of abandoning of dogs and cats, especially during the summer months, for there is no justification for such an act. Abandoned animals wander around hungry, thirsty, exhausted, scarred, often dying of dehydration or under the wheels of cars. A very small number of abandoned dogs and cats find a new home.

It is important to understand that the problem of abandoned dogs and cats is the problem of the entire community and all relevant institutions, not only of so called animal shelters (dog shelters).

The laws on animal welfare of civilised countries predict very high punishments for animal abandoning, which indeed influence the owners and make them consider all the consequences of adopting an animal. For example, in nearby Italy an act of abandoning a dog or a cat is punished by a year in prison and up to 10,000 Euros.

If the unjustified and merciless abandoning of animals would be adequately punished in Croatia, surely such highly irresponsible and frivolous acts of taking and than rejecting new "toys" would have been solved.

We ask you to release this news so that we could invite the public to give homes to these animals, to condemn their abandoning and to raise consciousness of citizens about this ever present problem.

Abandoned dogAbandoned dog 2

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