Náš Zvířetník is an on-line daily issued by Dagmar Ruščáková, a Czech journalist. Originally founded under the name Zvířetník this daily was a part of the first Czech on-line daily called ‘Neviditelný pes’ and led by Michaela Neffová, wife of Ondřej Neff, founder of Neviditelný pes. Originally Zvířetník was strictly meant to be about animals – mostly about pets. After death of Michaela Neffová in 2002, Ondřej Neff, the editor-in-chief and the owner of Neviditelný pes daily, asked Dagmar Ruščáková, the current editor-in-chief and owner of Náš Zvířetník, to continue after his wife’s death as an editor-in-chief of Zvířetník, a part of Neviditelný pes. After that personal change the style of Zvířetník gradually changed in topics and became more interactive. The articles topics were broadened from animal only to other activities, such as travelling, cooking or hobbies. As the time passed, Zvířetník got its editorials called BTW and articles of a more informative character – about different professions, world’s history, personal memories and so on.
Meanwhile Zvířetník, together with whole Neviditelný pes, became a part of Lidovky.cz, the on-line version of the Lidové noviny Czech printed daily, which attracted more people to Zvířetník. Zvířetník’s readers and authors started in mid-2000s regular meetings and formed a community far outside from the scope of the Internet. As a community, Zvířetník became active in promoting animal welfare rights, as well as in charity.
In 2010 Lidové noviny, the hosting partner of Neviditelný pes, decided to include compulsory registration under real names for the discussion forums on all its website, including Zvířetník, due to vulgar, xenophobic and other inappropriate comments posted by the Internet users there. Although this was never the case in Zvířetník, still Zvířetník was a part of a bigger entity using its system. As a reaction to this, Dagmar Ruščáková split from Neviditelný pes and moved Zvířetník to her own server and domain – naszviretnik.net, where it is until today. She became a full owner of a new entity called ‘Náš Zvířetník’, which has continuity after the previous Zvířetník in all its activities. Náš Zvířetník became a family business – Dagmar Ruščáková’s sons, Andrej Ruščák and Marek Ruščák are involved in running the server; Andrej Ruščák as an editor of the category ‘Zvědavé Historično’, which can be vaguely translated as ‘Curious History’ and the webmaster of the portal; and Marek Ruščák as a designer of the logos used by Náš Zvířetník.
In August 2011, Náš Zvířetník, as a separate entity, got its ISSN number 1805-0107 assigned. By this time, Náš Zvířetník is open for further expansion into other activities and topics.
