Forty-six million denars. Around 750,000 euros. That is what the City of Skopje paid out over the past year in compensation to residents bitten by stray dogs. That is not a budget for solving the problem - it is a budget for paying the consequences of a problem left unsolved.

By 24 June this year alone, the public company „Lajka” had received 710 reports from residents requesting the capture of stray dogs. The shelter has an official capacity of 140 places, and around 180 dogs are currently housed there - the difference covered by outdoor pens for group housing.

The numbers that explain the arithmetic

Monitoring from 2023 showed around 4,000 street dogs on the territory of Skopje, of which roughly 48 percent were neutered. But the figure that rarely gets mentioned is another one: Skopje has around 40,000 registered pet dogs, and only about 9 percent of them are neutered.

Which means the source of the problem is not primarily on the street - it is behind a door. The company points out that the causes are tied both to irresponsible ownership and to uncontrolled breeding of pet dogs. The monitoring also showed that around 18 percent of the dogs found on the street were owned, but left unsupervised.

Last year around 1,000 dogs were captured, of which about 850 were neutered. After capture, a dog goes through veterinary treatment - neutering, rabies vaccination, microchipping and an ear tag - and is then usually returned to the location it was taken from. The exception is when a bite has been reported and backed by medical documentation.

Dogs that „appeared overnight”

The most uncomfortable part of the story comes from the ground. A resident of Taftalidže describes how a group of dogs appeared in the neighbourhood last autumn and has stayed in the same spot ever since. Not one of them had been known to residents before, and none had ear tags. The group included females with small puppies.

„Lajka” says that, according to field observations of that same group, these are dogs not native to the area, and that the fact the whole group appeared at once, with none previously treated, creates reasonable suspicion that the animals were relocated from another municipality outside Skopje.

So somebody loaded them up and unloaded them in somebody else's neighbourhood. That is not a problem with dogs - it is a problem with people, and in this story it carries no penalty, no name and no proceedings.

A resident of Ǵorče Petrov, now pursuing a damages claim, describes how a few days before New Year a group of six dogs met him at the entrance of his building. They surrounded him and started jumping at him, and one of the largest bit him on the leg. He sought medical help at the State Hospital the same evening.

Earlier this year, an investment of 30 million denars was announced to expand the capacity of „Lajka”. The comparison speaks for itself: 30 million for expansion, against 46 million paid out in compensation alone in a single year. The City of Skopje did not answer questions on the subject.

That is the system in one sentence - it pays more for the consequence than for the solution, and then goes quiet when asked why.