How does the Center Make a Difference . . . . .? 

The Center’s Data Base and Matching System 

The Center has established the only city-wide computer data base of lost and found cats and dogs, which facilitates animal rescue in the following way:

1.  Incoming Calls Concerning Lost and Found Animals 

The dispatcher on duty receives phone calls concerning lost and found animals, and those given up for adoption, primarily cats and dogs, from the residents of both St. Petersburg and the metropolitan area.  Callers reporting a lost or found animal must give a detailed description of the animal and the circumstances and area in which it was found. 

2.  Registration of Information into Data Base 

The information received from these calls is entered into the data base, where the animal descriptions are checked against those already registered by the Center.  If a lost animal call does not match any existing registered animals, then it is entered into the base, and the dispatcher contacts a homing volunteer who will begin the necessary work (mostly in the form of advertising the dog to potential adopters) to eventually place the animal with another good home.  We currently have twelve homing volunteers who deal with animals usually according to breed, i.e., there are volunteers who specialize in homing mixed breeds, collies, shepherds, cats only, etc.  Usually the animals are temporarily housed with the person who found them on the street, but who for some reason cannot keep them indefinitely.  On many occasions, however, the homing dispatchers have taken in the animals themselves, with many volunteers housing as many as ten animals at a time. 

3.  Advertising Lost Animals in the Local Press 

The Center regularly advertises “lost and found” animals in the local press as well as in animal-friendly newspapers published in the St. Petersburg metropolitan region. 

4.  Matching Animals with Animal Adopters 

At the same time, the dispatcher receives calls from people interested in adopting an animal.  The dispatcher conducts an initial telephone interview with such individuals, and if he is satisfied that this person can potentially provide a good home to an animal, he directs that person to one of the homing volunteers who finds homes for the type of animal he is interested in.  The homing volunteers are responsible for thoroughly vetting those interested in adopting pets, and they ultimately decide whether to allow the adoption to take place.  An agreement is signed by the individual and the Center in which it is stipulated that the individual is responsible for the full care of the animal, and that a Center representative has the right to make unannounced visits to the individual’s home at any time during the animal’s lifetime to check on its welfare.  Only when the Center is satisfied that the individual will provide a good home and he/she agrees to the conditions in the written agreement will an animal be released.  In such a case, the person interested in adopting the animal will be put in touch with the individual giving a temporary home to that animal, with the Center mediating contacts.  The adoption usually takes place at that point.  This system has allowed the Center to take thousands of dogs and cats off the street and place them with loving and caring owners both quickly and humanely. 

Below we have inserted a diagram which depicts how the Center mediates animal “lost and found” and adoptions within the St. Petersburg community.   (N.B., The shelter remains hypothetical; however, we have included it so as to illustrate its function within the Center’s activities.) 

St. Petersburg, a city of about 5 million people, has only a handful of municipal and private shelters.  The situation in smaller cities and towns is considerably worse.  Since the major economic transformations of the 1990’s, Russian cities and towns have all had acute stray animal problems.  In the early and mid-1990’s many people put their pets onto the street when they could no longer afford to keep them, and the stray animal problem snowballed from there 

While the situation has improved since then, at present there are literally thousands of stray dogs and cats in St. Petersburg at any one time.  Some strays are “adopted” by local residents who regularly feed them, and in the winter try to provide them with some kind of shelter.  Other strays live near food sources and during the winter find warmer places to live, such as in open cellars and along major thermal pipelines.  Others are taken in by “animal collectors,” usually elderly ladies.  Only in the past year did the city animal control authorities, which until now have caught and destroyed stray animals, agree under pressure from local animal welfare organizations to catch and sterilize strays and return them to the streets, where local citizens can continue to feed and shelter them.  Now they are reconsidering this program, which would have tragic effects for the city’s strays.