From Fermin Perez.
Hunting Season In Full Swing
The hunting season began in earnest in the autumn and this brings with it more animal abuse, deaths, neglect and exploitation of dogs who are later rejected. The poor souls are either surrendered directly to Scooby or dumped in the countryside straying and fending for themselves, running the risk of starvation and injury in a road traffic accident. Some hunters, in various locations near to each other, corral their dogs and ask us to take them. The calls from local villagers about loose dogs have already started. We drive to pick them up, bring them to our clinic and kennels where they are vaccinated, castrated, and treated for injury and illness. We keep them safe until we can home them in Spain or via our international support groups.
The weather so far has been very wet and this has made hunting difficult. It remains to be seen how the season continues, whether or not it is impeded by soggy winter weather, and how many dogs are discarded into the Spanish shelters.
#MismosPerrosMismaLey : “No Discrimination For Dogs In Law”
A new and very ambitious update to our animal welfare law is under discussion in the Spanish Parliament. It covers penalties for animal cruelty, training for pet owners, prohibition of puppy farming and sales of pets in pet shops. All of this is laudable and needed. The proposed law goes even further to prohibit euthanasia of healthy pets (unless public health & safety is at stake). However, the governing party, PSOE, has succumbed to lobbying from hunters and has proposed an amendment which
would exclude hunting dogs. This is very worrying and Scooby is totally against this proposal. We have been supporting a
national campaign: #MismosPerrosMismaLey (literally: “Same Dogs, Same Law”).
There have been several well supported peaceful demonstrations in Spanish cities, a big red campaign bus circulating in
Madrid, backing from Spanish celebrities and a successful social media campaign. You will see our Facebook posts and Tweets. One “tweet-storm” tagging the ruling party soon became a trending topic and a second one last month reached over 81,000 retweets.
Other political parties suggested their own amendments as alternatives. Thankfully these were rejected as they would
not have helped animals at all.
The latest position presented by the PSOE & Podemos coalition Government indicates the welfare of hunting, shooting and
livestock guardian dogs (“working” breeds) will be captured under regional laws while the dogs are “working”. The full implication is yet to be understood but it demonstrates an intention to discriminate against working breeds, putting the welfare of one group of companion dogs at a disadvantage. We are still focussing on the campaign to stop the Government from denying protection for hunting dogs. If you are on Twitter, please do follow @Scoobymedina and retweet the campaign messages. We refuse to give up.
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