Hello, hope all is well with you, I'd describe it as pretty reasonable for me.
I'm a little sick of self revelations that do my reputation no good at all. I have quite a few twitter related things I want to complain about, but they can wait.
Instead of these good old stand bys, I want to use this space to discuss one of my other preoccupations. It's my blog, I can do what I want with it after all.
Before I go any further, I want to let you know, that this post is likely to distress anyone who genuinely cares about the suffering of other sentient beings. It isn't nice, but then, things worth speaking about rarely are. It's the nature of the world. The ugly stuff forces us to take notice. The cute stuff is well, "cotton candy", looks good, tastes cloying, ultimately though, it's nutritionally empty. In other words, a total fucking waste of time except for the 'feel good' factor, which is, I concede, worth something, sometimes...
Are you familiar with Pondencos? Galgos? Spanish Greyhounds? They are all members of the greyhound family. In Spain, these physically beautiful, and temperamentally gentle, sensitive dogs are used for hunting. At the end of each hunting season, a number are hung from trees with wire. The better hunters are hung higher up so they die faster than the unfortunate ones who are hung in such a way as to allow their feet to maintain contact with the ground in order to prolong their suffering
The conditions these dogs are kept in are usually inhumane, no sunlight, overcrowding, or left out in burning Spanish sun all day, no shade, no proper food, no comfort, just abandoned. Nothing.
Often, when they are no longer useful in any way they are tortured to death or simply left to starve . One apparently fun way, popular with some sub humans, is to insert a stick in the greyhound's mouth, keeping it open, so that eating and drinking are impossible, obviously, if not found, the dog suffers slowly and painfully, till he or she dies.
I think the saddest, most heartbreaking thing I have ever seen is a picture of a very young female podenco in a Spanish killing station (it's the photo up top). Her ears and tail had been cut off. Animals have endured worse cruelty than this, but the look in that dog's eyes haunts me. It's unbearable. Sadly, that young girl, although removed from the "shelter" by a German rescue agency, had to be euthanased. The man who had 'owned ' her had so tortured her body and destroyed her mind, life was just a never ending story of fear and sadness for her.
I don't wish to imply that the Spanish are exceptionally cruel. They are not. When we got our ex racer, she was in a lamentable state, and she was straight out of mainstream wealthy Anglo society.
She was really in a shit state. Her mind is still affected. Five years later, she remains afraid and untrusting of anyone except for us, her immediate family, even so, even within her own home, fear remains her default emotion if anything out of the ordinary happens. I don't know what happened to her, but at a minimum, I suspect she was very roughly handled, and I would guess not shown much, if any affection.
When she came to us, she was so hungry she tried to eat stones while the uncaring bitch from the adoption agency told us that the dog's state was normal and par for the course. We wanted to say: "The dog is starving and underweight, she has no fucking fur on her bottom presumably due to general ill health and stress, she howls if someone touches her...this is OK with you?" Some people are just heartless trash. And deep down, they know it.
In Spain though the condition of greyhounds is made worse from the absence of laws regulating the treatment of these gentle, harmless dogs which have traditionally been seen as disposable working animals.
Anyway, these are the animals we try to support, nothing outstanding, just the usual signing of petitions, cash donations and so on.
I've posted pictures which follow, they aren't easy to look at. Take that as a warning. But however awful you may find them, I promise you, I've seen worse, and you will too if you take the time to look into the plight of these achingly beautiful dogs.
I have also included links for you as well. Again you can easily find more information on the WWW.
PETA: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Facebook | Protest the Torture and Murder of Spanish Greyhounds
Galgo News: Meet the Podencos - Ibizan Hounds - with SARA Lanzarote and Pro-Galgo Spain
Scooby Medina shelters hundreds of
Far from Fear
The First Photo is shows a Podenco that had been rescued from Spain and is now living happily in Germany. I wanted to show you this so you could see how astonishingly beautiful these dogs are. You won't see if from the pictures that follow.
These are the heads of Irish greyhounds that were sent to Spain. What actually happened to these poor, harmless dogs doesn't bear thinking about.
This poor boy was kept muzzled and chained to a wall for most of his life.
This is not an unusual fate for a Spanish greyhound at the end of hunting season.
And another one.
A "lucky" one. This dog made it to a caring charity.
Another "lucky one"
Not so lucky I guess.
No words for this.
A very, very lucky, very young Galga now living in a loving home in Germany.
