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We advocate on all animal protection and exploitation issues, including experimentation, factory farming, rodeos, breeders and traveling animal acts.
Animal Defenders of Westchester
P.O. Box 205
Yonkers, NY 10704 |
Campaigns
Stop Dog Racing
Born to suffer - Born to die
No, don't look away from its eyes.
Dead and cold, they reflect all the pain and horror of the ones whose
only offence was to be born at all. Only that the dead of this dog won't be
in vain, that the fading of its cry, the ripping of its skin and the end of
its agony may serve to help that others won't share the same fate.
He was young and he was strong but something seemed to go wrong for him.
Maybe he wasn't fast enough, maybe he let escape the prey, maybe his owner
just lost any bet and thus it's punishment was the most horrible of all
deaths, the most slowly. How long did he had to fight to make its feet hold
the weight of its own body? Why keep on living? Just to let fall in the end.
And find liberation, to rest in peace.
Since the day he was born, he had to prove that he was strong, that he
was worth it. Running besides his mother and his brothers. Searching and
hunting the prey without eating it. And its reward was to return in its
kennel where he received its daily ration of dry bread and fat. Where he had
to live together with the lice and ticks and where the smell of urine and
excrements choked him. Where in the suffocating heat of summer and the
chilly cold of winter he waited for its master to run out on the fields, to
prove that he was useful, that he was the best.
So he did this day, as well as any other day. Sometimes his master tied
him to his motorcycle. And even when the exhaust fumes almost suffocated
him, he faked that he wouldn't mind at all, that he was eager, that he was
the best.
He saw one of its brothers stretched out on the street, a bloody corpse
that couldn't stand no longer the rhytm he was forced upon. But he had to
keep on fighting, he had the heart of a winner.
Its mother had been a real hero for him and even if she was almost ten
years old, every six months she'd given birth to marvelous whelps which were
to be sold to other hunters. At least he had the luck that he could stay
with its mother. During the night he enjoyed the heat of her body and he
remembered its mother licking its snout and biting tenderly away the vermin
and licking softly its wounds after returning from the hunting. For its
master it would have been useless to call for the veterinarian. What for? It
was even cheaper and easier to breed new Galgos.
But this day today, something went terribly wrong. What had it been?
Where did he go wrong? Nothing at all but, being almost two years old you're
not worth it anymore being a greyhound, a Galgo. Other, elder dogs were
better for breeding and other, younger dogs were better to challenge him
being the best.
And today, like any other day, he left the kennel with its master. But
today and as they unawared passed an old deserted warehouse, his master
threw a rope around his neck and tied him up the gallow.
Its hind legs still slightly touched the ground and it took him lots of
effort to keep upright. But all its efforts were in vain. Neither its howls,
its whimpers, nor its struggling, its gasping. It didn't matter at all.
His master sat beside him, together with the oher greyhounds, just to
watch him tied between life and death, to watch him in a fight he won't be
able to win. And � thing he didn't know either � this fight would just
extend its agony thus, serving as an example for the other dogs, the
punishment for the flaw, for the fault.
The punishment for being born a Galgo.
The situation of Galgos in Spain
Last 17th of May and once again by chance it was found in Pedro Mu�oz
(Ciudad Real) an abandon warehouse in which you could see a hung up
greyhound by the terrible system of �playing piano�, next to the remaining
of other greyhounds, surely hung up at the end of last hunting season.
By this kind of killing, the back legs of the dog slightly touch the
grounds and the animal hung up himself as he goes getting tired. On this way
the agony can go on during hours, sometimes even days.
From years ago it is being reporting by particulars, Spanish associations
of animal protection and international ones the constant massacre of
greyhounds by their owners, due to the fact that they want to have �new�
ones (that is the way in Spanish young greyhounds are called). Everything we
got is to count with the collaboration of associations abroad that search
for families for these poor animals, but year after year hung up greyhounds,
thrown to holes, abandoned on fields with broken backs for them not to be
able to move. Others are �simply� abandoned to their own luck ending up on
the roads, dead of hunger, thirst, full of tick that literally leave them
without blood.
The Spanish Administration has not taken any measure, except to make more
city or town death camps (city kennels) and firms to collect greyhounds
after hunting season, so these animals can be killed in a �legal� way, even
if they are young (most of them are 2 or 3 years old) and healthy animals.
The association Las Nieves has getting greyhounds directly from the
galgueros (the owners of galgos) from 3 years ago, trying at the same time
to do an awareness campaign with these hunter, trying to convince them that
the only solution to the massive killing of animals is the control breed,
since there are not enough families to adopt the thousand and thousands, it
is estimated that more than 30.000 greyhounds are killed every year in
Spain.
The obligation of putting microchip (until now there were wide areas in
which it was not obligatory), shows the total inefficiency, since it is not
uncommon to get animals with wounds on their necks, the hunters say they are
due to hunting but we surely know that the wounds are from taking out the
microchip. Logically we are against hunting, but we know there are strong
economical interest that make impossible the eradicate it, even if they have
to breed animals to repopulate the hunting areas, but it would be easier to
control 1000 breeders of greyhounds that hundred thousands of galgueros
privately breeding in their poultry yards.
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