At last someone else got the figure right. I’ve been saying nearer 100,000 every year since I looked at the figures back in 2015 for my presentation at the PAES conference.

Let’s look at the figures.

Estimated ANNUAL figures for uncontrolled breeding of galgos.

Back in the early 1990’s, a friend of mine who was a Daily Mail staff photographer, was visiting the Castila-la Mancha province. His guide walked him into an olive grove where he photographed the olive trees, many of which had a dead galgo hanging from them, which made headlines in the paper.
In 2009 SOS Galgos (Barcelona) claimed on their website that 160 galgos were abandoned every day.

That equates to 58,400 galgos every year, abandoned or dumped in perreras for killing, including reports of galgos hung in olive groves. With all the adverse publicity, the galgueros responded by abandoning their dogs and dumping them in perreras in greater numbers. There are now fewer instances of hangings because – however much the galgueros claim ‘there are no hangings’ – digital photos on the Internet accurately show dates and times and show the real truth. And because now one or two associations are not afraid of instigating court action against these dog-murdering men. And I’m talking about podencos being hung, as well as galgos.

Move on a few years, let’s look at figures again 2015.

There are about 250,000 galgueros in Spain, maybe as many unregistered ones too. Every galguero has at least 2 dogs, some have as many as a dozen or more. So say 250,000 registered galgueros each with 2 dogs – that’s 500,000 galgos. Say a third of those are female, 83,000 galgas. Most will be pregnant, each having an average of 6-8 puppies. So we get 83,000 bitches with a litter of 6 puppies (being conservative). That’s 458,000 galgo puppies born in one year!

Bit exaggerated, you think. Well, here’s an example. 2 very pregnant galgo bitches dumped at a refuge in Seville province in February this year gave birth to 19 puppies between them. That makes 21 galgos – from just 2 bitches, just in one month, in one refuge.

That’s not counting the galgos the galgueros abandon to live on the campo, covered by any dog in the vicinity producing yet more puppies!

90% of them will be abandoned, dumped, murdered. The galgueros will only choose one or two pups they think will make good hunters/racers.

And these figures don’t include the galgos with unregistered galgueros and gitanos.

Remember – bitches can have 2 litters/year – many galgos are used as breeding machines for maybe 6 or 7 years.

So a galga could have 6 puppies/year X 6 = 36 puppies in 6 years X 100,000 bitches = 3,600,000 puppies

To see more, look at the Milanuncios.com website – for galgos and podencos…you’ll get the idea of the magnitude. There is at least 1 galgo/5 mins advertised for sale, including bitches with pups.

Author Beryl Brennan 10 2015

For figures for podencos, see this link.