I can’t emphasise enough what fabulous hounds podencos are; marvellous companion dogs and, if you get a young one, easy to train and marvellous agility dogs (they are very popular in agility competitions in Germany especially). Bev Farmer fosters podencos and works hard on training them for forever homes. Here’s a great video which illustrates just how well podencos respond to training.

Bev was one of the many volunteers who went to Bullas on Operation Rehala at the beginning of 2012 and here is what she says.

‘All the dogs I handled that day were female and many had recently given birth. I believe it was a puppy farm and the reason the open graves were there was that there would have been a high mortality, rate due to the poor condition of the bitches and the conditions they were living in. So only the strongest would survive producing a good hunting dog.

I have heard the owner is well respected within the hunting fraternity for supplying quality dogs. I don’t think Bullas is a one off, there must be many more.

I really want to bring the Podencos to the attention of the public. The Galgo has a strong support network with groups giving financial aid, but there is very little for the Podenco. Yet they suffer the same atrocities.

What I try to do is promote the Podenco and I hope that if we can compete at agility, we might get people to see them in a different light. My view is they are great athletes so why can’t they excel at this sport

I made a little video showing some basic work with one of mine with Lucia, who I adopted last October (2012). She had very little confidence with people and to begin no-one could be within 5 metres of her, but now she will allow people to touch her.

I have done little training with her because it was more important to concentrate on her socialisation with people, but you can see even with just a little training how focused she is and in time I know I have a super star. She won her first obedience test. I cannot enter her in agility until September (2012) because here in Spain they have to be 18 months old to compete.

Whilst we were on the beach, to up the ante and create a distraction, we had another one of our Podencos with us and yet Lucia still was listening to me. It just shows what can be done with training them.’

Bev also did marvellous work with Denzil, another podenco with Galgos del Sol, who has been adopted.

Please give Podencos a chance, they are loyal and loving and totally the opposite of galgos in that they are active dogs – they give as much back to their owner and more.

But don’t be in too much of a hurry to let them off leash in an open space. Bev has a special gift with her training methods. After 4 years with me, I still don’t let my podenca Bebe off leash in our meadows.