The neglect of podencos
Writer: Jesus Villanueva Jimenez.

” Canelo is a podenco, although he is not aware of his advanced age. It’s really not that old, if you had been adopted by a family animal lover; your age would not be an impediment. On the contrary, you would received more love and attention.

However, Canelo is owned by a hunter. The greater part of his life, along with other dogs of the same race, has been subject to being chained from the neck barely able to move on a square meter of rough, hard and cold cement. Between the walls of gray blocks, under a roof of asbestos, under the same conditions, lying on their excrement and urine, all with chains around their necks, toiling along with Canelo are a dozen more hounds. Sentenced to life imprisonment-never better.

Sometimes the master, sometimes the woman of the master, tip a bucket of food in the prison, which is eagerly devoured, especially when they’ve been two or three days without eating. Canelo, like the others, knows that on the morning of the fourth day he will be driven in a van, SUV, somewhere in the mountains, where they will be released and run behind the rabbits. It’s the hunger that makes them fly like heck after small fast and elusive animals with long ears.

But Canelo, he is taken to run along with the other dogs, Poor Canelo, the rabbits move faster than him. Our friend Canelo is unaware that he is no longer useful to that man, which other men call hunter.
Now, a little while ago that Canelo travels with his master in the van. His bones and joints ache after an existence barely without moving, stuck on a square metre of soil, chained to the wall of a medieval dungeon! They stop in the middle of a dirt road into the bush, between tall pine trees, just the light from the headlights of the vehicle.

Canelo is happy with small things, out of the rear passenger compartment of the trailer, a box of metal sheets full of holes, where so many times Canelo and his unlucky companions, under a hot sun, have felt very close to hell itself. Move your tail, Canelo! Stretch your legs, shake your head and lick the hand of your master. But his master grabs him by the neck, ties him to a long rope. the rope is flying over the branch of a pine tree. Canelo sees the other end of the from from her neck fly around the branch and fall back into the hands of his master. Feels how the rope is close to his throat. Something moves above him that gets his attention. It’s the wind in the leaves of the tall branches. And when he looks upwards, among the pines, Canelo discovers the stars. Never before has Canelo seen the starts.”

http://www.laopinion.es/sociedad/2016/03/14/maltrato-podencos/661819.html