Gjakova

StrayCoCo = Straydog Control through Cooperation

Our showcase project in the South-West Balkans

OUR COMMITMENT IN GJAKOVA

In 2022, the municipality enabled the treatment of 600 dogs. Our foundation paid for 200 dogs. We also approved 200 treatments for 2023. If the municipality does not contribute, we expect 500 treatments. The registration program for dog owners is accepted in the city. But, farmers and shepherds in the villages are showing effort - it is precisely the people who abandon their dogs in autumn! That is why we are stepping up our prevention efforts in 2025 with educational campaigns and free castration/treatment when a dog owner barely has any income. Every donation is welcome!

Gjakova is our showcase project in the South-West Balkans. In mid-2015, the former mayor, who followed our missions in Peja, agreed on a castration program with our vet for her city as well. In April 2016, we gave up Peja due to a lack of cooperation with the city and since then we have taken care of the street dogs every year - back then with the rented clinic in Nagavc. Since the end of 2018, these trips are no longer necessary. With the hospital building 4 km outside the city, it was possible to treat far more dogs and to enable privately kept dogs to be treated with the veterinary practice. The photos from 2015 show what it looked like in Gjakova back then. Today, dogs wear ear tags and are castrated, vaccinated, and dewormed. This has had a positive influence on citizens' acceptance of “community dogs.”

OUR DOGS IN THE SANCTUARY, FEBRUARY 2025

With our project manager DVM Blendi Bejdoni and his N.SH, the city of Gjakova has. Pro-Vet Clinic signed a contract on June 16, 2015, according to which they would participate in a castration program and pay a cost contribution over the next two years that should be sufficient for the treatment of almost half of the current stray dogs. Our foundation supported the campaign there with an additional worker - and covered the full costs of castrations in the second half. The program was slow because the city insisted on having our workers and vets monitored daily by a health department inspector — and he was often gone. We therefore had to wait again and again until the next capture and treatment campaign was approved by him. Who introduced this bureaucracy in Kosovo anyway? - was a hindrance in every way.

Since August 2016, the city lacked the money to further finance the CNVR. We took over and continued the castration and treatment project there at our expense. A generous donation from a Kosovan Swiss helped us get started with this work. But even here, we still depend on donations to continue working continuously.

Since the beginning of 2018, we created models of what controlled dog ownership looks like. On the one hand, we already carried out this program in Mamusha, at the express request of the Deputy Mayor. And now in the village of Rogova, which belongs to the municipality of Gjakova. Here, too, people have contacted us and expressed their wish for a chip, registration, and castration.

There may be street dogs in the Gjakova region, but they are all marked. If dogs are abandoned again, Blendi and Eriola Bejdoni will report them to Pro-Vet Clinic Gjakova. We will act immediately! Injured dogs are a constant problem — traffic accidents and dog fights, aggressive dogs on the street that belong to someone who enjoys killing other dogs and cats! Time and again, we have to euthanize seriously injured dogs.

And a few kilometers outside, we built the country's first veterinary clinic - with an integrated sanctuary.
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Hund Behandlung in Tierklinik Gjakova, Kosovo

Gjakova Transit Clinic

In October 2018, we opened this veterinary clinic in the presence of the Swiss Ambassador Monsieur J.-P. Lebet and the Mayor of Gjakova, Ardian Gjini. The clinic also serves to train veterinarians and is also visited by children and adolescents to learn how to handle animals.
In the autumn of 2017, we began building a modern veterinary clinic for western Kosovo. Slowly, step by step, we moved forward. In this “transit clinic”, street dogs are treated and released later unless they require prolonged care. Our sanctuary is also attached, similar to what happened before in Nagavc.