Last weekend Amigos de los Galgos carried out yet another ‘lift’ of galgos rescued from the horrors of Spanish hunting life. Working with the Pedro Munoz refuge in Ciudad Real, 11 dogs were brought across the border to start their new life with families in France.

Nuria and Ivan have a supportive team, including Cecile, Noelle and her husband, and Laetitia, who headed north with the dogs, including a 4 month puppy and a podenco. Sandi and Joanna work hard with fundraising, fostering and rehoming in south eastern France, and Aurore is the representative in the Pyrennees.

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Last Saturday, 26th January, Passion Levriers was once again at the Spanish frontier to pick up 10 more galgos, prepared for adoption in France.

At the same time local Basque TV did a short report, which you can see on the You tube video clip above or via this link. There was also a report on Telecinco, another TV chain, but inaccessible to most of us over here.

Our vehicles collecting the galgos took over 23m³ of food, bedding, medication etc for the Spanish refuges in the hope of helping them through the rest of the bad weather and the surge of animals being abandoned as the season [for hunting] draws to its end….

It’s easy to tell the end of the hunting season in Spain is near. The galguerros are getting rid of their dogs. Why, because they can’t be bothered to keep them during the summer.

San Anton refuge, in Villamartin, now has over 50 galgos and, in the last couple of weeks, the volunteers have arrived in the mornings to find yet more left at the gate.

Five of them have been taken in by Paul and April Carrier at Alpha Dog School, sponsored by L’Europe des Levriers.

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I’ve just received the following tale of an horrific story, sadly one which occurs far too often in Spain. The story is told in the words of the Spanish volunteer.

Once again it happened…. In our land of famous wines, even better cheeses, and…… land of galgueros!

Yesterday evening (Saturday 15th December) at 21.00 o’clock I got a phone call from the emergency number 112.

Someone had called them because they found a greyhound, still being alive, in the gutter of the highway that was lying there since Friday morning. The dog could not walk.

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Dumbo, a male galgo in the care of Levriers en Detresse Midi Pyrenees, was looking for his forever family. He’d been adopted previously in a home with two french Beaucerons, who unfortunately didn’t accept him, so he was returned to the association.

Luck was in for him, in the form of a lonely female sloughi in need of a canine friend. Dumbo was quite shy at first, but settled in, and was such a success that the family have now adopted more dogs from LEDMP.

To date they have the sloughi, Dumbo the galgo, Shaneh the afghan and Trophe the whippet.

Quite a canine Noah’s ark!

from Joanna Simm

When I said I would foster Galgos, those wonderful dogs so badly abused in Spain, I didn’t really expect that my first fosters would be babies!

I collected them from Deux Sèvres, where I’been to the L’Europe des Levriers fund raising lunch – not exactly a 10 minute drive down the road, as I live near Carcasonne in Southern France! I knew that if any of the newly rescued dogs had no homes arranged, I would be bringing them home with me, but it was quite a surprise when I was handed these two lovely babies…

Ah, the patter of tiny paws! It’s been a while since I had such little ones around the house, and I wondered how long it would take them to settle in after such a traumatic start to life, and the long journey out of Spain.

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