Odile Brochot, president of Lévriers sans frontières, and 6 French volunteers just returned from a rescue trip to Spain. They went to a perrera to save some dogs from certain death there, took their rescued dogs back to Fondation Benjamin Mehnert, went to a galguero hideaway, saved some dogs there and then went to Scooby Medina where they also took some dogs to be taken back to France to be adopted out.

At the perrera, they saw an angel and met the devil.

The angel was Andrès, a young vounteer from Fondation Benjamin Mehnert. He goes to the perrera and tries to save dogs from death. Obviously, he cannot save them all, but he tries his best. In doing so, he has to deal with the devil, a young woman, all made up and dressed as if she’s out there battling monsters (great, big, thick coat and huge, thick gloves), instead of scared little dogs… She enters each box where there is a dog whose time is up (11 days after being admitted, if no one claims it) and she loops a choke collar around the terrified dog’s neck which she then tightens at will.

One such dog that LSF wanted to take bit the devil (it’s quite normal for a dog to try and defend itself), but she would have none of it and decided that he would die. She killed him as she usually does with an injection in the heart without the benefit of a tranquilizer first… She shows them no mercy, no empathy, no affection. She kills about 30 dogs per day in that one perrera. Imagine the terror and pain that those poor dogs must endure after 11 days in that hellhole where they live directly on the cold and humid concrete, in their excrements, barely fed and watered. 11 days of slow agony…

LSF saved 8 dogs that day… and the worst is having to choose who lives and who dies. And having to live with the images of all the dogs that they had to leave behind, all those dogs that were looking at them and wagging their tails, hoping to be chosen…

From there, they went back to Fondation Benjamin Mehnert, where the rescued dogs were looked after by a vet.

They also went to a galguero hideaway. A sordid place where there are galgos and podencos everywhere in small cages, kept in the dark, their living space full of excrements. The place is absolutely horrible. They were able to rescue 3 galgos and 2 podencas, who have gigantic hernias on their stomachs. The galgueros said they could take those, otherwise they would throw them down the well that they have on the property…

After that, they went to Scooby which houses 300 galgos at the moment… It’s an impossible task to decide who gets out and who stays, but it has to be done. They were supposed to take 10, but took 20. Unfortunately, when they choose galgos, they have to keep in mind that the galgo has to be fairly “attractive” in order to be adopted out, because the sad reality is that very few people want a handicapped galgo, a severely injured galgo or an overly traumatized galgo. Those get left behind all the time. LSF does take some of the least attractive ones anyway, but they take longer to adopt out and, sometimes, Odile or one of the volunteers ends up keeping it.

It was no doubt, an extremely hard trip, one where they came back feeling frustrated that they couldn’t do more, take more of them… And sad about the ones that they had to leave behind. Their pitiful bark and pleading eyes haunt Odile and the volunteers long after they have returned…

Link here to photos of the trip

Thank you to Danielle Hart for the translation to English.