There are emails circulating around at the moment about all the galgos arriving at the Mairena killing staton, in southern Spain near Seville. I have not been sure what a killing station is exactly - except the obvious - it's a place where they kill dogs! Is it the same as a perrera?
Mo Swatek, President of Pro-Galgo, has so much experience of the plight of the galgo in Spain, and this is her explanation of how a killing station operates.
'A perrera is a killing station but either run by a private person who offers its services to the cities and villages or by a business, often the companies who remove the rubbish/trash also manage the perreras.
Some of the perreras are managed by animalists, but usually it's a big business for the owners of the business; receiving huge money per caught dog, keeping the dog on the base of "bread and water", and then destroying it the cheapest way possible. And you have to know that many killing stations are neither legal nor even known to the public.
We know that some small villages have a "dog catcher" and they just pay him to catch the abandoned dogs and nobody asks what he is doing with them...
The dogs in the pictures are in a killing station in Mairena, which makes a huge profit with the dogs extracted from there. They receive already from the town halls of each village and each city a "catching fee" for each dog taken in the streets of the villages that contracted their services; usually between 150 and 200eur per dog just for taking it in and keeping it for 14-21days, depending on the local laws, and then euthanasing the dogs if not adopted.
Now a lady is dedicating her time to sending those emails to hundreds of email lists but she is not a member of an association, although she is obviously a great animal lover and wants to help the dogs.
The problem is that, for most of us associations, it is first far to expensive to take dogs from there and second too far away, Mairena is in Seville.
The killing station asks 70 euro just to take the dog out, they say it's for the rabies and microchipping, (actual cost of that 4 euro per chip and 4 euro for the vaccines, the rest they pocket in the killing station.)
The dogs then need to go to a quarantine kennel for anther 5-6euro per day per dog, 21 days minimum to legally move them into other European countries. That makes another 120 euro per dog minimum if you can rehome him immediately. If not, you can imagine how expensive it will be if the dog stays for 2 month or longer..., then the prices for the vet fees are extremely high there, so a dog would cost us an average of 500 euro until he could be with his new adoptant. For example PRO-GALGO can not afford such expenses as we have nearly 0 money donations and need to more or less autofinance the dogs with the adoption fees.
Our costs per dog are over 300 euros to prepare its European passport and transport it to, say, Frane or Germany.
I personally refuse to pay to those guys who manage the killing station in Mairena 70 euro per dog, money that they pocket directly. In other killing stations the dogs leave chipped and vaccinated either for free or max 25 euro per dog, that is reasonable but anything else is unaccaptable for us.
If we would take Mairena dogs, it would cost more than double of it because some vets and the killing station make huge profit on those dogs and we refuse to be emotionally blackmailed this way.
The Spanish shelters are completely overloadad because everybody wants to save dogs from the killing stations but it is a vicious circle because the shelters are sooooo packed, they can not take new dogs in, so all abandoned dogs immediately end up in the killing stations and to take dogs directly from killing stations is terribly expensive. (If they are not in the shape the ones were we took last Janaury, perfectly vaccinated before because I had sent the vaccines to the killing station) but in Mairena there is no collaboration desired, the management of Mairena only wants to have the money, they do not collaborate in any case.
So the pictures are made hidden, no character information of any dog possible, not even allowed to enter into the kennels. The lady who makes this cry for help is for sure a nice person but all she can do is distribute the pictures but not able to help in any other way.
A rescue should be made like this to exclude any people in perreras pocketing money:
1. the dogs should be always taken from shelters or killing stations managed by animalists, such as the one in Tudela where we take all the galgos out, because the shelters can prepare the dogs well and can tell us about the chracter and can socialize them. The stay is not as expensive as in bording kennels, also they usualy have vets who collaborate with reasonable prices
2. then when the dogs are adopted from the shelters, the shelter could take in new dogs either directly from the streets to avoid that the dogs end up in the killing stations or going to the killing stations and taking out dogs from there and prepare them for adoption
3. this way, less dogs end up in killing stations in the long run, and the killing stations make less money and the dogs taken in the shelters are better cared for, suffer less stress and also are causing less expenses when being prepared for adoption.'
Thank you, Mo, for your explanation. All that continues to come across is that the situation in Spain for the poor galgos is absolutely horrendous, and I expect it applies to all the other abandoned dogs of Spain.
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