Couple’s fight to end Spain’s ‘secret shame’ of dog cruelty
Groomer tells of her campaign to rescue maltreated podencos
CAMPAIGNERS call it Spain’s “secret shame” and now a Scottish animal lover who has spent the past two years rescuing dozens of the country’s maltreated hunting dogs is calling on animal lovers here to back efforts to end the cruelty.
Irene Allan and her husband, Steve, ran a mobile dog grooming business in Lanarkshire for 30 years before trading it in back in 2008 to seek a more relaxing lifestyle in south-east Spain.
But seven years later the couple from Glenmavis, near Airdrie, are now at the forefront of the fight to protect Spain’s most neglected canine, the podenco, and Mrs Allan is bringing the message back to Scotland with a rally in Glasgow on May 1.
The event, organised to coincide with simultaneous marches in London and Manchester, will see supporters gather in George Square to distribute leaflets before walking to Glasgow Green. Dog lovers are welcome to attend and bring their pets along.
The 57-year-old has rescued and rehabilitated 60 dogs at her Hope for Podencos sanctuary in Orihuela since she took up their cause two years ago, and has found loving homes for them as far afield as t he UK, S e at t le and San Francisco.
Mrs Allan, who still returns to Scotland every six weeks to groom dogs for long-standing customers, admits she had never even heard of podencos, the Spanish word for hounds, before moving to Spain.
The breed, brought from the Canary Islands in the 8th and 9th centuries, are used to hunt rabbits, deer and wild boar, but thousands face a grim existence and an even worse fate once the hunting season ends.
“They’re born to be tied to a wall 24/7, whether it’s in 40°C heat or -14°C in the north of Spain,” said Mrs Allan. “They’re fed scraps because the mentality is if the dog’s starving it’ll hunt better. They stuff 20 dogs in a trailer.
“The lucky ones are the ones that get lost and picked up, but this season a lot of them got smashed by cars because they hang around petrol stations looking for food.
“At the end of the hunting season they hang them. It’s barbaric.”
In some cases, hunters will hang podencos from low tree branches so that their hind legs barely touch the ground, forcing the animals to “dance” back and forth until they die in a cruel practice dubbed “playing the piano”.
Others are shot, drowned, burned, poisoned or offloaded into dog pounds where they face being put down with excruciating injections of bleach.
The lucky ones are driven to remote locations and dumped, but in one horrific case an abandoned podenco reportedly had its eyes gouged out so that it could not find its way back.
While bullfighting is often criticised outside of Spain, most foreigners are unaware of the plight of podencos. Increasingly their treatment is being condemned within Spain, with protest marches in Seville, Malaga, Madrid and Barcelona in February this year.
Campaigners argue that authorities turn a blind eye to the cruelty because hunting is valuable to Spain’s struggling economy.
Mrs Allan said: “Hunting is a big thing in Spain. It’s like hiring a ghillie to go fishing. They sell ammunition, clothing for hunting, trailers. You can book to go hunting here.”
One of the podencos rescued by the Allans, Celeste, was found with neck wounds from a failed hanging. She has been rehomed in Hazelbank near Lanark. “It’s not a lot, but you have to find the right homes for them,” said Mrs Allan. “Someone said to me it’s like emptying a loch with a teaspoon, but if you can save some you have to try.”