We – myself (Orsolya Hegedüs), and my husband (Csaba Hegedüs) have been doing all the
work for the rescue of the komondor breed on a voluntary basis (for about 4 year now)
without any financial or material support, in our own free time, beside work and having a
family ( two wonderful kids, three komondors and a puli of our own). We pay our telephone
bills and go on rescue missions in our own car.
We finance the transportation, pet boarding house, if needed, the food, medical and other costs – as we do not have premises yet, from donations requested and received for the respective rescue, and of course out of our
own family budget.
Komondor is a rather “special breed”. Because of its dominant, strong willed character,
powerful, giant stature rescue does not end with relieving them from their bad situation and
providing medical care. Neither their transportation or the finding of adoptive owners is easy,
not to mention restoring their confidence in human kind, since the ties between a komondor
and its owner are much tighter than in the case of any other dog breed. Those komondors who
have lost their trust in man can only regain it through the hard work of long weeks and
months. If we do not devote this time to the needed work it could be detrimental to either the
dog or the new owner. For this reason we rehabilitate and re-socialize every dog in our care,
assessing their character, so they can go to that particular family where they can become a
useful and excellent member of the family for the rest of their lives. This, of course, needs
time, time the dogs have to spend somewhere (either our own garden or at a temporary
owner). This procedure also has its financial requirement.
We socialize and rehabilitate our rescued dogs ourselves and prepare them for their new life.
The 300 komondors rescued recently, who were taken to new families from our care (not the
mediated ones being in the care of others, whom we just advertised, but the ones we ourselves
and our voluntary temporary owners rescued) prove that we are good at what we are doing.
Take a look at Komám, Vándor, or the 9-10 week old puppies, or Mátrika and the others, and
you can see what we are capable of.
We have a small, but effective support team who help our work with temporary adoption (2
people), brainstorming, translation, and organisational tasks. Members of the team come from
all over the country and keep in touch via the internet. There is a Vet, who realising the
seriousness of our situation, is available almost any time of the day, if required.
Most of the grants and donations come from abroad for which we are extremely thankful, as
without them there would not be komondor rescue in Hungary.
Thus I ask you all to take the above into consideration before you are criticising our work or
giving well meant advice. But it would be still better if you would join us to continue the
rescue of this excellent breed together.
