This is fascinating. These dogs are descendants of the ones who were left behind when the town of Pripyat was evacuated after the meltdown.
Yes, there is a link to a fundraiser but I am sharing only because of the subject matter.
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Oh my goodness! Adorable!
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Thanks for posting - had no idea !
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Oh wow! I had never thought about the domestic animals and how they were affected. I wonder if people went through and set pets free after people were evacuated.
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I hadn’t given it any thought either, and it was never alluded to in anything I’ve ever read on the topic. I’m glad they have people seeing to their welfare.
I found it remarkable how homogenized the pack is. No giant dogs, no toy dogs, no coat types that can mat up and cause problems. And that the organization has to redesign uniforms every year because the dogs recognize them otherwise!
ETA: come to think of it, I’d never really considered the possibility of Soviet citizens having pets at all. I guess I assumed it would be regarded as a “bourgeois” luxury.
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I read someplace that if you took all the breeds and placed them on an island the eventual result would be a wild type dog with a coat length appropriate for year round. Prick ears, slight curl tail, wild color
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Chernobyl is in the Ukraine. There were lots of stories about people fleeing the current war with their pets and how that limited options to relocate
Those dogs look like the dogs when I was a kid!
I also thought it was interesting how multi generational feral dogs still retain the ability to connect with people in a way that even a human habituated pack of wolves or coyotes wouldn’t.
Like mustangs. The domestic animal is still latent in the feral one. Mustangs are much easier to take and train than zebras!
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People are pretty much people no matter where they live or what their government is like.
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But Ukraine in 1986 was part of the Soviet Union (if you meant to correct me, which may not have been the intent). Evidently Pripyat was, in Western terms, solidly middle class and a job at Chernobyl paid pretty well.
I agree, it’d be relatively easy to transition one of these dogs into a household pet, especially a puppy.
The tan hound-looking dog shown solo in some of the shots, is a dead ringer for my late dog Lance:
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some of the most haunting photos from Pripyat are from the amusement park ,ferris wheel etc
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Yes, I know the Ukraine was part of the USSR but it has always been culturally distinct. Also the USSR never had quite the level of social control over it’s people as China did. I think China was quite anti pet. One child rule, etc.
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Sadly, most of the domestic pets left behind were later exterminated by liquidators because of the risk of them carrying radiation outside of the exclusion zone. Obviously some managed to escape this fate and these dogs are their descendants.
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There’s a very difficult to watch part in the mini series “Chernobyl” that shows the elimination of animals left after the evacuation.
I wonder how many dogs showed up after the fact, long after all the people were gone. I really hope that just outside the exclusion zone didn’t become an unwanted pet dumping ground.
I was just thinking that many of the dogs look happier and healthier than some poorly socialized “designer” pets I have met.
Of course, given their lifespan is so short, that might also be why they look relatively healthy. I wonder why there isn’t more of an adoption pipeline, like with Sato dogs.
Because they are radioactive?
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I thought they said in the video that some of the dogs had been adopted out? I know the political situation is obviously very dicey, but I think they said some had found homes.
I would guess, only assuming because it is not mentioned in that video, that those that have been adopted were likely taken as very small puppies so not likely as contaminated as an adult dog would be.
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That makes sense (and I guess they can use a counter just to “check” the levels on the dog, just like I know they did fruits and vegetables for consumption that might have been contaminated by radioactive clouds after the meltdown).
Definitely “we don’t deserve dogs” on another level, here!
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So this is obviously an older prewar video. Chernobyl was the site of some fierce fighting early on in the current war, with Russian soldiers apparently dug into radioactive hotspots without knowing where they were. There was some fear the shuttered reactor could be damaged and leak. I wonder how the dogs survived? The ground war has been devastating on the landscape, major shelling and explosions
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The video itself is fairly recent and IIRC mentions that the Clear Futures Fund group has been to the site to care for the dogs at least once since the war started. They’re planning another visit pretty soon.
Kyle Hill’s (he’s the creator/narrator in the video) visit to Chernobyl was in 2021. He’s posted several videos about his time there on his YT channel, which is excellent.
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