"Making life easier for strays." Astrakhan animal rights activists are saving steppe dogs from death.

Activists are building a shelter near village of Yango-Asker, Narimanov districtThey collected 1,6 million rubles, but this was only enough to fence off the area. Animal rights activists are pleased with this: the dogs, which roam the steppe in large numbers, are now on private property, safe from being hit by traffic or captured for euthanasia.

Locals are against the shelter: according to animal rights activists, they used to graze cows and hunt there, but now the land is private. Residents are writing to all authorities and complaining to the media. Activists are fending off the attacks.

"For some reason, the state has chosen a position where it doesn't want to help the most vulnerable—the elderly, children, dogs—so we're forced to take them under our wing. We want to make life easier for homeless people ourselves, but staunch opponents are coming at us from all sides: they come to our homes, they climb over the fence." says Zookeeper Maria.

Currently, some of the dogs are kept indoors—some in kennels, others in kennels. But some animals don't even have their own bowl, so volunteers are accepting donations of items that could be useful at the shelter.

Animal rights activists say they're simply solving the problem of stray dogs, just not the way the Astrakhan region authorities are doing it. This is the first region in which legalized euthanasia of stray dogs.

Photo: Arbuz-TV