Save a child? Save a dog? Either way, you save a valuable life.

I took this off Facebook today. Please read this article with an open mind before taking the familiar and very unfortunate question: “With the children who are starving, let’s save a dog ? “.Yes, there are many children who die of hunger, but, fortunately, not in Spain.

In Spain one hundred thousand dogs are abandoned each year. With the advent of the crisis, kennels and shelters have been saturated. And this epidemic of dropouts shows me what I already knew: if you buy a dog as one who buys a bag, pay for a puppy just because the breed has become fashionable, it is as likely to leave as you stop wearing the bag when season pass.

In a kennel, you can select the race you want: Sharpeis, yorkshire, bichon, Jack Russell, Pug, pitbulls … Dogs are sold in nurseries from 300 euros a puppy.

In Spain we can boast of being the only country that does not have a national animal protection law. This means that although in theory abandoning or abusing an animal is fined in practice, it is an action that goes unpunished. And to say that in Spanish kennels dogs and cats are slaughtered at European level, even if it has been shown that the relocation of the animals in foster homes or host is not only a more ethical but … cheaper!

Animal shelters, run by volunteers and without the vast majority with subsidies, they look and want them to save some of the condemned, often sending them to Germany or France, countries with higher animal consciousness in the that abandonment is punishable, and sale, is strictly controlled.To those who say: “Why worry about the animals and not the children?”.

I always reply: “Forgive, and you what do you do for children?”. It turns out that these people never, ever, are members of some NGOs. You could also say that I care very much about children just because the fact that a dog feels empathy enables me to feel for any person in distress. Or you could tell that the animals are the best friends of children.And above all, I could tell that the idea that man is superior to the rest of the animal kingdom is ridiculous.

In fact, we are the worst among all animal species, the most damaging, the most violent, that multiplies out of control, which destroys its own habitat, the apex predator. In very limited and extreme cases, a rational animal kills a fellow. And of course no rational animal kills a colony of congeners.

But we are not only destroying the planet we live but we do not know how to take care of our own species: We are seven billion people. One billion suffer from hunger and malnutrition due precisely to the greed and exploitation of their peers.

And finally, this Christmas many children are going to ask for a dog. Please do not buy it, and convince their friends and family so they do not. Please adopt one of the hundreds of thousands of dogs waiting for a home in kennels kennels and protective of Spain.