Over 140 dogs have disappeared from a canine shelter in the eastern city of Lukow. Animal rights organizations claim that the dogs have been slaughtered.

Animal rights activists claim that the shelter run by Urszula Konstantais is a death factory, where dogs are slaughtered for money.

In two years over 270 dogs were officially registered at the shelter but no one knows where they were kept or where they have gone. They were supposed to be adopted or moved to another dog shelter in Wolomin, 20 km east of Warsaw run by Marek Klamczynski. However, an inspection at the Wolomin shelter in 2006 has found that no dogs from Lukow were ever kept there.

A dog shelter in Lukow is the cheapest dog-house in the Lukow county. Local authorities pay 200 zloty (49 euro) a month for catching and looking after a dog, while in other dog shelters the price reaches even 500 zloty (123 euro) .

However, conditions in the dog-house are bad: dogs are kept in tiny cold and dirty kennels and usually do not get food.

The head of the shelter told TVP television that the money from the local government does not cover all the expenses. The shelter provides room for only twenty dogs, but Konstanta assures that the rest of the dogs caught on the streets is adopted or moved to another shelter.

The Prosecutor’s Office, which investigated the case twice, did not manage to solve the mystery of disappearing dogs from Lukow. The fate of 3,000 dogs from Wolomin shelter is also unknown. Klamczynski received 1.6 million zloty (390,000 euro) for the dog-house from local authorities but, equally to dogs, the money disappeared. (mg/pg)

Source: TVP Info