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About the shelter

Our Smeura shelter in Pitesti, Romania is home to over 6,000 dogs and between 200 and 450 cats. Smeura, the largest shelter in the world, a title we are not proud of, is located in a large wooded area near Pitesti, a town of around 200,000 people, about 120km from Bucharest. It is 5 hectares in size and used to be a fox farm. In 2005, we were fortunate enough to be able to purchase the land. The property is owned by Tierhilfe Hoffnung e.V.

 We have been working on the ground in Romania since April 2000, and since the beginning of our animal welfare work we have been confronted with new culls of street dogs ordered by politicians who have had tens of thousands of dogs brutally murdered, without the mass culls ever leading to a reduction in the number of street dogs.

 At our shelter, the dogs we save from the city's dog catchers are fed, medically treated and neutered. Neutering is the only way to minimise the overpopulation of street dogs in the long term and prevent unneutered dogs from moving from the villages to the city, breeding and starting the vicious circle all over again.

 We have also converted four former ambulances into neutering vans for this important work. We use them to travel to surrounding towns and villages to offer free neutering to local people.

 All our work is funded almost entirely by donations from German animal lovers, without whose help our animals would be completely lost.