Alison Standbridge is a leading voice for animal welfare in Romania, and she focuses on the issues the dog rescue movement sometimes seems to neglect. Her charity, Paws2Rescue, recently ran the first stage of a nationwide brucellosis research project, testing 100 dogs for this zoonotic disease, and will be running the second stage later in the year. As brucellosis cases have been rising in the UK too, we must know where the disease is and whether there are local hotspots both in the UK and in Romania, where tens of thousands of our rescue dogs come from every year. Listen to find out about health screening in general and what Alison has learnt about testing quality.

Paw2Rescue also runs a vet scholarship programme, and the charity runs spay-and-neuter campaigns throughout the year. And to ensure the local community is not ignored, Paws2Rescue volunteers run their 'shoebox campaign' every Christmas, donating presents to low-income families throughout Romania.

Alison is outspoken about the work of other organisations and critical of what she calls pop-up adoption charities that seem to be hardly more than a money-making scheme. Adoption, she makes clear, isn't solving the problem of Romanian street dogs. "But trying to make [adoption] their solution is like using a teaspoon to empty the ocean. These pop-up people always say 'we [charities] need to educate'. Show me, because they might do one year to campaign a year and shout really loudly about it. They'll do the one-off token one just to tick the box, but they're not focusing on helping the stray dog population in the country of source."

I know you will enjoy this episode with Alison, which also touches on the Kept Animals Bill and Alison's work with Defra.

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