As chairwoman of the Kilkis Animal Friendly Society (in Northern Greece), I would like to draw your attention to the Society's website at:

 http://www.kilkis-animal-friendly.org

where we are desperately trying to get conditions improved at the Kilkis Municipal Council's dog pound. As you will see from the pictures and short videoclips available on our site, the Town Council here has dogs locked up in thoroughly appalling conditions - for example, their food and faeces/feces are mixed up on wet mud, they often go for up to five days without food or fresh water, even recently when the temperature here fell to minus 8 degrees Celsius, and dogs which have broken limbs or, in one case, distemper, are kept together with healthy animals.

The Council has managed for four years to hide the state of the "dog pound" (for want of a better word) from the view of the townspeople - it lies off a little used dirt-track outside town - but we, as an Animal Friendly Society, have reached the point where we can no longer tolerate the Council's and the Mayor's lies and empty promises of the last four years. Things came to a head last week when four small dogs managed to get under the jerry-built fences within the pound (pictures available on the Society's site) and into an area housing larger dogs, and the smaller dogs were savagely killed by the larger ones. Some young girls later went to the "pound" and discovered the dead animals, two with their entrails torn out, and contacted us. The Council took the dead animals and just dumped them by the side of the dirt-track a short way from the "pound". We took photos of this macabre sight and published them on the site, much to the subsequent fury of the town's mayor. I am very sorry to say that the Council STILL has not gone to give the dogs a proper burial, SIX days later, and of course the dog's corpses are in a none-too-pleasant state now.

I am sorry to be putting such details as these on what is clearly a forum for people who care deeply about animals, as the members of our Animal Friendly Society do, but we are desperately trying to get support in the form of emails of complaint to the mayor of the Town Council here, and copies to the competent Greek Ministries. We would be extremely helpful for any help in the form of such emails that anybody reading this could offer us. The situation faced by animals in Greece generally is dire, but we feel we can at least get the situation here in Kilkis improved.

There is a link on our site's main page which will open your email program with the relevant email addresses (the mayor's and the Ministries') already entered into the appropriate fields. Alternatively, you can email the mayor directly at:  dhmarxos@dhmoskilkis.gr Please also copy any emails you send them to our Society -  info@kilkis-animal-friendly.org

Thank you so much in advance for any help you can offer us.

Christina Portarinou
Chairwoman, Kilkis Animal Friendly Society,
Northern Greece