The „Animal Rescue Project" association is sounding the alarm over two dead dogs found in the Skopje municipality of Kisela Voda. Location - near residential blocks, on paths that locals walk every day. Suspicions: deliberate poisoning. It isn't the first case. It won't be the last. This is the scenario Kisela Voda and the neighbouring municipalities watch play out several times a year.

The question that rarely gets asked out loud is a simple one. Who is poisoning the dogs? Not hunters - hunters have their own methods. Not vets - they can do it humanely in a clinic. Not animal welfare workers - the law obliges them to clear procedures. That leaves one serious possibility - residents who don't want stray dogs in their neighbourhood, and who have decided to solve it on their own terms.

This is a hard question. Not because stray dogs aren't a problem - they are. They can be dangerous, especially in packs. They can attack children. They can carry rabies. Their care is the responsibility of the municipality and the Ministry of Agriculture. When the system doesn't work - when they aren't sterilised, aren't placed in shelters, aren't vaccinated - citizens are left alone with the problem. And that's when the poisoning cycle begins.

Kisela Voda municipality has a programme for handling stray dogs. On paper. Sterilisation, chipping, vaccination. In practice - the programme covers maybe 20% of the total population. The other 80% live and breed. Every year, a new generation. Winter is hard. In the coming springs - more dogs, more suspicions, more carcasses.

Animal protection associations regularly demand stricter penalties for poisoners. Under Macedonian law, this is animal abuse - a sentence can go up to 3 years in prison for serious cases. In practice - hardly anyone is ever held accountable. The evidence is hard to gather. There are usually no witnesses. Investigative teams are already swamped with other cases. The result - the poisoners stay free, the dogs keep dying.

For Kisela Voda residents who see a brutal case, the questions need to be broader. Not „who did it?" - we'll never get an answer to that. But rather „why does the municipality still not have a functional system?" A question of political will and budget. Today's dead dogs aren't a surprise. They're the predictable outcome of a system that has, for years, quietly accepted that volunteers and citizens pick up what the institutions are supposed to do. And every spring - the same pattern, the same headlines, the same empty promises.