Animal Defenders of Westchester

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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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