I’ve received the following article which is quite thought provoking.

Spain is a country which is on now its knees. It’s gone from dictatorship to good presidency and bringing a country up on form and being recognised as a good place to be. From there, the previous government to the current one, the latter was voted in December 2011, brought bad practices into its own when they took over. The country became run down, the people suffer, but as always, the politicians walk away with clean hands and a tidy pension until death. To compound the negative results of that government’s actions, Spain was hit with the Global crisis.

Spain is a country hanging by its thread and it’s hard to live here. It’s no longer for the majority of families who only just get by, it’s a country for the rich. No-one else can afford to be here. It’s not uncommon now to see beggars at supermarket doors, prostitutes in the streets, and people looking through the bins for something to sell at market or simply just to eat. Behind the face of the political well paid world, the public struggle to do what they can to survive. It’s the way it is in Spain in 2012.

Alongside this we have the people who have migrated here, can’t make it and leave to go back to their own country; some of them leave behind their beloved pet, for they cannot possibly think about asking for a loan from someone they know so they can take it with them, or saving the money until the whole family, including their pet, can travel. Sadly many of them – if they can’t find another home for their pet – may either just abandon it, or take it to the perreras, where it succumbs to jail, the fight of the strongest, and inevitably sacrifice. It’s happening over and over!

I’d say Spain has probably 5 types of animal owners;

1. The pets in homes, the genuine pet lover, the type who will visit the vet when the need arises.

2. Then there is the animal lover with pets at home but who has a finca somewhere and has a dog to “guard” the finca, but chained up. He says it is ok, he “says” he loves his pet and its fine.

3. Then there is the ‘pet’ owner who has a warehouse somewhere else, another part of Spain, a hunt area, or even where they are maybe, (depending on the area) and they keep their galgos, podencos, spaniels away from the house for to him they are not pets, they are working dogs. Does anyone go during the week to feed them? Maybe, but you can bet it is only dry bread.

4. Now we come to the owners the ones who keep their dogs in hovels, in the cold, existing in their excrement, they are just dogs, they don’t need anything; spoken about as an object, and even with disgust for existing.

5. And let’s not forget the sick people – children and adults – who torment abandoned animals. What to do, in a country which celebrates killing bulls? How to explain that animals have feelings.

I once spoke with someone who said “yes, what happens to the galgos is bad, I agree it should stop, but not the bulls, its tradition. Never stop that!” Horrified, and more so as the person was female and a mother! Bringing up 4 children who will hear what she has to say.

Let’s take the first animal lover – no. 1. – a home owner who has a little dog, walks it, takes it to the park every night to play with his friends. Social escape and express horror at what they know the galgueros get up to. A fact they know, but they just accept it.. For what can they do, they say?

Now No. 2. – the family who have a pet at home, a little one, but at the finca where they spend their weekends, they have a German Shepherd who guards the finca. What they fail to see is that, while the dog is chained up, he cannot do much about attacking a robber! Nor can he himself actually call the police from his paws and bark! Is it just an “ownership” thing, to say they have one!”

Next, No.3. – the man who walks amongst us, maybe the optician, well groomed, who doesn’t look like a hunter, doesn’t look like he has 20 dogs in a warehouse somewhere. He goes amongst us during the week, then at weekends he dresses like he is in the military, he is in there, in for the kill. When a dog has served its purpose, well dump it! Leave it behind, it’s a hunting dog, it will find food! (Ive heard that before!) Not all hunters “look” like we would imagine them to be, they go amongst us and have good professions. Of course there are some, who you can inevitably identify as hunters, and their loyal dogs return to them and accept the beating their owner offers, for they have tried to escape the door or just play amongst themselves. Wrong move!

Finally, No. 4. – the ‘person’ who owns the dogs in a shell of a building – you can call him ignorant, for he knows no better, or the inhuman unfeeling uncaring being he is for keeping his dogs the way he does. For it’s here we may see the person which splits into 2 people – one which cannot afford to keep his dogs but doesn’t give them up, or the evil one who just doesn’t care. For they are items of substance, maybe not even required anymore.

No. 4 type allows their dogs to overbreed, not a vaccination between them, and yet between him and his ‘amigos’ they will inter breed between them to either sell the pups or give them away. One excuse from these types is the excuse that while a bitch (female dog) is in season “she is asking for a male”. This is another world and to break this old mould of thinking is very very difficult.

And it’s not only the man who walks this path, as he will take his wife to the hovel at weekends, she thinks no different from him, for its a man’s world where these animals are concerned and between them all in the village, they all know what each one is up to and have opinions on each other. Yet to each other, they wouldn’t say a thing.

Yet they are the ones between them who target those of us trying to make change. They sneer at us behind our backs, but to our faces agreeing with us. Complex idiotic people with self egoistic views, and gypsy thinking “the more I have the better I am” – clueless as to what it takes and costs to save an animal. They would rather see their animal suffer, cry poverty, than give it up. Selfish selfish greedy penny pinching men. the wife goes along for the ride, for what her husband says just “has to be right!” He knows what he is talking about, and no-one can match up to that! Plain idiots in my view.

Spain is breaking many an animal owner. For these days I don’t need to go too far away from the initial pet owner in a home.. to find horses abandoned on the streets. Left to their own devices. Wandering, horse after horse after horse on the roads, the campe… Either being given away, or dumped. People lifting their hands in “I can’t take anymore”, broken to the last cent, they give up. Animal verses family eating.. ? A slaughter house re-opened after years of fight to close it but demand makes it reopen.. and therefore opens the door to live transport of animals from afar yet again, to kill the animal. The suffering they endure to actually get there, prodded and poked, all in cramped conditions, the smell of death greeting them.. none of that matters anymore.

Some people hold on in a selfish egotistical way, seeing their equines breed year after year after year, some idiotic view of the equine being worth something still to this day, thin, and hungry but kept due to greed. Rather see them this way he says, than give them for next to nothing! Again, who suffers, only the animals. He cries poverty but owns several properties, rich in land, but declares no cent for his animals’ food. He prefers to send them to slaughter crying poverty than give the animal away to a good home. A horse starved almost to death, but blamed on being elderly. Too many animals creates the law that the strongest amongst them will survive. The weakest fall by the wayside and the owner walks away, with a never mind attitude. Not an ounce of sorrow for his horse.

All in greed; to, keep an animal in a hovel, see it weekends, hit it for not being strong enough, “the animal hasn’t eaten all week” but they can’t see past their neglect, which they justify with “I didn’t have any money!” That leads us to the evil of taking an animal, a galgo especially and shooting it in the head for it no longer is needed. Left half dead. a common act.

More and more and more there is neglect, people walking away and leaving their animals in hovels to fend for themselves, being reduced to eating each other, or the acceptance of just taking a dog to a perrera and that’s it.

I believe those who take a dog to a perrera should be made to sit and watch a ten minute video, to see what happens in the perreras, right down to the killing. Also they should be asked to fill in a form.. “How do you justify us taking on your bills and what makes it ok?” But then that may stop the fools who actually do take the dogs there and put the fate of these dogs back into the owner’s hands?

Well I have that answer, as a volunteer I’ve heard it all before, the reply “that’s what you are there for!” Most perreras are municipal, run via means of the council, the people who work there have paid jobs, and it may or may not be an easy job for some. The rest of us who love our animals, we are volunteers for them. We work tirelessly to mend, fix bodies and souls in order to help them move on to a new forever. All this, for free! Picking up the pieces of neglect from selfish idiots who wash their hands of their animals.

It’s an accepted practice here to have a small type dog at home “for the children” but keep the BIG dogs outside. Of course the little dog can sit on a balcony all day and cry, but the BIG ones, wel,l “the pooh is too big” – I’ve heard that one as well! To go to the country house at weekends and let the dogs out, all normal and justified, the owners think. Hunting normal and justified. To walk your dog on hunting land, you and your dog risk being shot, for its hunting land.. and the hunters have aggressive guards to do such a job. BUT hang your galgo out there, is another thing.

The law is tightening up, and SEPRONA do take things seriously but it’s the mentality towards owning an animal which has to change; how to keep an animal from the beginning of ownership which has to change, for the rest, it’s just too late.

The volunteers are at the stage where they have to draw strength in hope and faith for future change. We are fed up of dealing with ignorant people, disgusting people, and selfish idiots, being handed dogs and even forced to buy them in order to save them.. gypsies coming to refuge doors, hunters tying some up on the doors… or even throwing them over the fence.

The refuge may just have found homes for 3.. and 4 new ones enter. It’s a struggle to find and help these animals at a time where no one has money. Donations are low, physical strength is all we have – all done with love for the animal.

The galgueros and other selfish men (and women) – dog breeders, horse breeders – are responsible for good peoples’ health being ruined – we volunteers are tired, exhausted both mentally and physically, yet these bastards get away with murder.

Our relationships fall apart because there’s no time for private life, nor even doing family things, because always the animals need attending to.. it’s a lov,e a passion and a calling for many of us – the total opposite of the people who dump the poor soul in question.

Change will come… one day! It’s the only thing that keeps us going… surely change will come – one day.