There was apparently a rumor that Romania was filled with stray dogs. Then, that was changed. But has it changed back?
According to Dog Desk animal action there are 900 million dogs worldwide. This includes strays and pets.
Of that 900 million, “hundreds of millions” are “free roaming.” “Free roaming dogs” don’t necessarily fit everyone’s definition of “stray.” They could belong to a community, and cared for, but not be confined to a particular area. For some people, “stray” dogs are those that are unaccounted for and not looked after.
The countries with the worst problems, worldwide, seem to be India, Pakistan, Turkey, Morroco and Mexico. However, Romania is also mentioned, especially Constanta, and some statistics for Ecuador and the United States also come into the article.
India
India has the most people in the world, and it also has the most stray dogs. There are 52-70 million strays. One million street dogs live in Delhi.
there were 3,717,336 dogs bites recorded in 2024. Total number of deaths by dogs is not listed. Two sources give wildly different numbers of human deaths by rabies. According to one source, there were 54 suspected human deaths by rabies in India. Another puts the number at 18,000 to 20,000 annually.
Efforts to lower street dog numbers run into problems with “lack of funding and infrastructure.” (That’s a nice way of saying that India is a poor, underdeveloped country.)
There have been urges for more forceful intervention in Dehli. According to the Solicitor General of India, Tushar Mehta, “Sterilisation only prevents the increase in their population, but it does not take away the power of the dogs to give rabies.”
India’s supreme court ordered that stray dogs be moved to shelters, stating, “Infants and young children, should not at any cost, fall prey to rabies. The action should inspire confidence that they can move freely without fear of being bitten by stray dogs. No sentiment should be involved.”
Pakistan
Karachi has 200,000 strays. “Mass poisoning campains are still common.” In total, Pakistan was estimated to have 3 million stray dogs last year.
It says there are growing calls for more humane interventions, but mass culling is still seen as a preferred form of rabies prevention.
Turkey
Depending on where we count Europe’s boundaries, we could say that Turkey is the country with the biggest stray dog problem in Europe.
Turkey has at least 4 million “stray” dogs. However, of the tens of thousands in the big cities of Istanbul and Ankara, “many are cared for by local communities.”
Other sources claim the law as a problem, where strays are not generally captured, and euthanasia is only allowed for “aggressive and diseased” dogs.
Morocco
Just south of Europe, we find Morocco. In Moroccan cities like Tangier, they call a type of stray dogs “Beldi” dogs. There are 30,000 in Tangier.
Humane “CNVR” (Capture, neuter, vaccinate return) ways of dealing with the problem were introduced, but there are still shooting and poisoning campaigns.
Romania
“Romania has the largest stray dog population in Europe” according to the Wild At Heart Foundation. While our original source put the number at :500,000 to 600,000″ Wild At Heart says 600,000. It appears that numbers are going up.
While it doesn’t say so directly, Wild At Heart hints that part of the problem might be Romania’s proximity to troubled neighbours. War can displace not only people, but animals too. Most of us know how dogs react to fireworks, imagine how frightening a war must be for the animals.
In Constanta, 8,000 to 10,000 stray dogs were recorded. In 2024 alone, 3286 were killed. (In Constanta, or Romania in general?)
“EU membership has incouraged sterilisation over mass killing” according to Dog Desk animal action. Perhaps they are referring to an European Parliament question that called putting down animals, saying “no form of EU funding” can be “used for the killing of stray animals.” Instead, it says that EU fund should be used “but can only be used for the humane management of stray animals, such as castration/sterilisation programmes, public education campaigns and the funding of non-profit shelters.”
But the example of the growing stray dog problem in Turkey has proven that this isn’t easy. “Shelter overcrowding remains a crisis.”
It is easy to find volunteers who act on shelter overcrowding. In many schools in Cluj, we have seen fund raisers for dog shelters.
Cluj-Napoca
In Cluj Napoca itself we haven’t seen as many strays recently, but we did see them weekly in the year 2020-2021. We still occasionally find evidence of the entrance of strays into gardens, and someone steps on that evidence.
We have also read news stories of people getting killed by dogs in Romania over the past few years. Sometimes they are killed by strays, and sometimes by their own dogs.
There are also stories of dogs saving lives.
On 30th of January 2026, there was a story of a woman in Cluj who was punished when her dog bit an eight year old girl. Both sides in the case appealed, the parents thinking the punishment was too leniant, and the dog owner thinking that personal responsibility doesn’t exist.
Romania has had laws for over a decade relating to dangerous dogs and responsibilites of owners. There are consequences for irresponsible owners.
And recently, the Cluj County Council has reminded people of its efforts to fight against dog neglect and abandonment. This includes helping owners to sterilising dogs and placing microchips in them to show that they are owned and not strays. A new campaign began this month, and you can sign up your dog by going to the local Ghiseul Unic website. (Deepl calls it “one-stop shop,” a “ghiseu” is like a service desk at a government agency or a window where you buy tickets.) Half a million lei has been devoted to sterilising dogs in the county.
Okay, so there are irresponsible owners, and Constanta has a stray dog problem. But does Cluj have a stray dog problem? Well, it depends on what you mean by stray. We often see dogs cross a street unsupervised. Recently, reported on the 16th of January 2026, there was uproar as a dog was hit by a car. However, this dog seems to have had an “owner” who ignored warnings for over a year.
Elsewhere, the first European to cross the border into Hungary after Romania joined the Schengen zone was in fact a dog.
Portugal
Portugal was not listed on this website, but another source claimed Portugal had 100,000 stray dogs. We didn’t see any in our last trip, although we did hear some dogs at night.
According to an Expat newspaper in Portugal, The Portugal News, it is now illegal to feed stray dogs in Portugal, with fines of up to 9000 (nine thousand) euros for doing so.
Russia
According to the European Society for dog and animal welfare, there are 4 million dogs in Russia. Statistics for other countries are also high by the same source, but it seems to be worse outside of Europe, with 600 million strays worldwide.
The United States
The United States has 1.5 million stray dogs. We saw strays on our visit to Northern Arizona. These “rez dogs” reminded us of the stray dogs you see in Rural Romania, or when you are going for a walk in the forest.
Considering the geographic size of the United States, 1.5 million is not as alarming as smaller numbers in much smaller countries.