I am going to be completely open hearted. The cruelty myself and many others witness, read about and hear, on a daily basis through personal experiences and the network of members on Facebook sometimes becomes too much.
I was very angry here in Spain for the first few years because I had no way of knowing how to handle the appalling situation for animals that I was surrounded by. Recently I feel I have learnt to channel it into the work here but sometimes something happens and you cannot contain your anger and frustration. So maybe this account is a little cathartic and perhaps will help the people involved, as they did their best and they need to know that.
BUT the main reason I am writing this, is to point out that something needs to be done about the situation of the Perreras, the kill stations and in particular one or two that need looking into sooner rather than later. The one I mention here today, I will not name to protect the volunteers and the dogs inside but it needs help. I shall not name yet but I am looking into ideas of what can be done about it.
A lot of dogs are saved from these kill stations through networking, it is by no means an easy task, it is fraught with frustrations through the language barrier, through volunteers not being able to communicate quickly and by the rules of the different Perreras. Perreras are so called refuges for animals and are usually set up by the Town Halls and run by a private company, that is typically the situation but many have different ways of being set-up. Privately owned ones can be very good, or very, very bad. In either case there are always too many dogs and they only have a certain capacity. If they become over full they will set a date for killing the overflow, many of them just kill a certain amount of dogs each week.
Do we always know that the dogs are put down humanely – no, but we guess not in every case, as the method costs money? This is a matter of great CONCERN!
If it were not for the volunteers there would be far more suffering. It is a complex problem and many people do not know what goes on inside of them. We can be sure though, that the bad ones are not there for the good of the dogs but are making money and this is something that compounds the situation. The perreras realise that they can make money from the general public, by blackmailing us with death row dates – and so we all pull out the stops to do something. Some volunteers that I know spend their lives helping these dogs and many of those volunteers do not even live in Spain. BUT here is a thought, if we were to identify who the bad Perreras were and boycott them, we may be able to stop this terrible cycle. If we focused our attention on the good Perreras and only adopted from them, then we would be sending out a very positive message. Clean up your act, run a good Perrera, take the animals into consideration, stop killing, look at alternatives, as there are ones. Promote sterilising in your town and there will be fewer dogs on the street. It is a thought but it would need a big movement amongst the volunteers.
So what prompted my anger and sadness, was this poor boy - above - he is in the bad Perrera and a plea went out. He needed to be freed as killing day was imminent; in fact it was to be today, as I write this. There was an adopter, a sponsor, even finance in place, all was left to do was to coordinate the operation. There was one volunteer in the US, one in Germany, three volunteers’ communicating from the Perrera, plus many more networking to help. I know this was no mean feat and a lot of preparation and networking involved. How stressful for all involved, they had a short time in which to save him. The Pointers plight had been picked up by the networkers on Facebook, he was beautiful (just like one of my rescue dogs in fact) he was afraid and gentle, the description from the volunteer made your heart go out to him. God only knows what situation he had come from already. Thank god he was going to be saved!!!
But he wasn’t, the kill date was brought forward and yesterday this poor, frightened boy’s life was extinguished, along with FORTY NINE OTHERS!! He had the chance of happiness AND HE WAS THROWN AWAY!! My heart breaks, yours is breaking reading this, I know. We need help in Spain to stop this.
Here is another - above -in a Perrera, this little boy is due to be sacrificed on 20th November, and he tries to escape his prison, no idea why he is there. So I am torn, do we boycott in the hope to save future dogs like this, or do we do everything we can to get them out as our poor hearts ache for their plight? I don’t know the answer…tears don’t help though…something must be done!
Viv Wharton
Taken from here