"Responsible for those..." category: The Russian "Walk the Dog" movement organizes trips to shelters in Moscow, the Moscow region, and other regions of the country.
For the seventh year now, in Moscow shelters, you can see people who come and take tailed charges, but not to their homes, but to the forest or park. And they leave with them ... walk. The "Walk the Dog" project was invented in 2018 by Dmitry Mikhailov. It all started with a routine visit to one of the shelters, where Dmitry came with a colleague to paint the aviary. At the same time, they took a homeless shelter dog and went for a walk with him. Then, gradually, friends and acquaintances began joining the colleagues, and gradually, the weekend hobby grew into a serious project that united thousands of volunteers, TVC journalists reported.
The goal of the "Walk the Dog" project is to promote regular assistance and visits to shelters and to increase the number of people who invest their time in volunteering.
"Every shelter is full of animals abandoned by us—people—and they need human attention, and it's so easy to give it—just take them for a walk, scratch them behind the ear, and give them a treat," the organizers write on their website.
On weekends, shelters are already welcoming new volunteers for walks. The animals themselves are eagerly awaiting them. For the four-legged ones, this is a chance to frolic in the fresh air, and for the humans, an unforgettable experience. Before taking their dog for a walk, newcomers are always given instructions. After all, some have never owned a dog before.
"Dogs spend most of their time in enclosures, of course, because there are not enough shelter staff for all dogs to walk at least once a day. Therefore, it is primarily the joy of walking in general, the dog can run, do his own thing, and so on. "The advantage is communication with people," says Zhanna Porsoyeva, curator of the "Walk the Dog" volunteer movement.
On walks, the volunteers have their own safety equipment. There is a forest around, they walk along a certain route, they try to keep dogs from different enclosures from intersecting. After the first round, you need to go in and feed your pet, and then calmly walk on. In one such trip, the project participants manage to walk about half of the shelter. But that's not all, because volunteers bring medicines, food, vitamins. And if necessary, they comb the dogs, wash the bowls, and build enclosures.
"When I conceived this project, I was planning to build one or two kennels. Now, we've assembled over 850 kennels in five years and donated them to shelters across Russia. It took us 8.5 hours to assemble the first kennel. And once we had it assembled, we realized it wouldn't fit through the door. "We had to partially disassemble it and then reassemble it. But we gave the shelter our first kennel. Since then, we've learned how to do everything quickly. We even hold kennel assembly workshops, and we can assemble new homes for dogs in an hour or two," says Dmitry Mikhailov, founder of the "Walk the Dog" volunteer movement.
The project is currently being implemented in Moscow, the Moscow region, Saratov, Gelendzhik, and recently, volunteers reached Omsk. The volunteers plan to expand the project to Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, and St. Petersburg in the near future.
In the northern capital, plans are underway to not only visit shelters but also organize workshops on building doghouses.
Photos from the "Walk the Dog" project.