Spain Preserves Dark Ages Mentality

If you’ve ever followed a travel program on television—Gwyneth Paltrow in Spain … On the Road Again or Rick Steves’ Through the Back Door—or watched Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, you’ve probably fallen head-over-heels for Spain. You’re familiar with its lovely landscapes, mosaic cities, and scrumptious cuisine. However, Spain keeps one of its worst secrets in the countryside, and I have to expose it in order for you to understand the crisis of a struggling shelter that needs our help.


Some animal welfare laws exist in Spain yet are not enforced, which is how the centuries-old boar- and hare-hunting practices continue. Hunters, called galgueros, use Galgos—a Spanish greyhound, cousin to the greyhounds known in the U.S. and the U.K.—and Podencos as their main “tools” and discard them at the end of EACH hunting season. Hunters spend as little time and money as possible in caring for these tools, typically confining the creatures to dirty, dark quarters with little water and food every few days. The dogs’ only “freedom” is hunting. When the season is over, they’re taken a distance from the hunters’ homes and 1) Tied to a fence or tree so they won’t return, 2) Tortured so they won’t return, 3) Taken to a “killing station,” or 4) Hung. (No hyperbole here. This is the G-rated version of how these dogs are treated.) Before the next hunting season rolls around, the hunters go to one of the innumerable Galgos puppy mills to buy a fresh tool.

The plight of the Galgos can hardly be blamed on only one segment of Spain’s population, though. The handful of shelters in Europe trying to rescue abandoned Galgos have found that folks in Spain don’t see them as pets—which is why, I suppose, they can walk by an injured or emaciated pooch and not only do nothing for it, but not think twice about it. So the shelters search for adopters in neighboring and distant countries.

Add to this the recent global economic tailspin and … voilà! … families are abandoning pets in record numbers alongside the Galgos. The shelters are overwhelmed. The granddaddy of them all—Scooby Medina, founded by Fermin Perez—has more than 500 dogs in its care now and, for the first time in its history, is having to turn away pooches in need. What’s more, Scooby lost its one lifeline it could count on: a subsidy of 3,000 euros a month. It was never enough, but it was the bread-and-butter of the operation.

In desperation and with only 5 months’ worth (now 4.5) of resources to continue operating, Scooby started Project 3000. Their aim is to get 600 supporters to pledge 5 euros a month for an entire year. That will make up for the loss of the subsidy. In dollar talk (and rounded up), Scooby should have at least $50,000 per year/$4,200 per month to care for the dogs. That’s a pledge of $7 a month for 600 people who care. And if more people knew about the Galgos, then Scooby could get even more money.

How We Can Help
1. Promote the cause. Send a link [http://lillslull.blogspot.com/2011/09/spain-preserves-dark-ages-mentality.html] to this post to everyone you know who cares about animals—especially those in Europe. E-mail it, put it on Facebook, blog about it, Tweet about it.
2. Give money. You can donate through PayPal (this link works for the U.S.), visit Scooby’s Web site for country-specific payment options, or write to U.S. Scooby volunteer Ms. Diane Ward at diane@scoobymedina.com.
3. Create a coat. That’s right—if you sew, use your skills for the Galgos. They’re very sensitive to the cold. You can even download a pattern from Galgo Rescue International Network (G.R.I.N.).
4. Send a letter to legislators. It’s time to stop the barbarians. Acknowledge cruelty for what it is and stop euphemizing it as “tradition” or “culture.” G.R.I.N. has contact info listed.

“Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.”
—Albert Schweitzer

5. Sign petitions. There are a number of petitions out there to reform animal welfare laws in Europe and Spain. Scooby has links to a few.

I know you’re tugged at for all kinds of causes. And you may wonder why, with all the recent weather-related tragedies alone, I’m obsessing over some hunting dogs across the ocean that most people have never heard of. I guess it’s their very lack of celebrity that make the Galgos the most needy of the voiceless.

Let’s make Albert Schweitzer proud and show our humanity in the name of the Galgos. Get the word out, get the credit card out, and get the Galgos the help they deserve.

Thinking About Not Thinking

I’ve just turned the last page of Dark Horses and Black Beauties. I’m glad I read it, but it was a workout in facing the facts about human nature and our dearth of kindness. I shudder to imagine the overwhelming amount of depressing and shocking minutiae author Melissa Holbrook Pierson had to sift through for the book. Here’s a single paragraph—sans stomach-turning descriptive details—to consider:

The toll of horse life on the battlefields of human wars can hardly be conceived. With Napoleon in Russia, one division lost 18,000 of 43,000 mounts in the space of two months; in the 1812 retreat from Moscow, 30,000 horses died, mainly from cold and privation. The Peninsular War caused Wellington to call the Peninsula “the grave of horses”: the 14th Light Dragoons alone lost 1,564 horses (of 1,840 total), while their loss of men was 654. The Boer War cost the lives of some 500,000 horses, mules, and donkeys (the Australians shot all their surviving Walers over the age of twelve when the war ended, since they couldn’t be returned home due to quarantine restrictions). In World War II, Germany lost an average of 865 horses per day over the war’s two thousand days—52,000 in the Battle of Stalingrad alone. (Entire libraries of books are written about this war without any mention of the millions of animals who perished.) One day in 1939 the Pomeranian Cavalry Brigade lost 2,000 horses in thirty minutes; a witness described the road to Warsaw as lined with thousands of dead and dying horses. The annihilating charge of the Polish cavalry against German Panzer tank divisions stands today as the very emblem of grotesque futility. You will note that this very partial accounting begins only with the nineteenth century.

My reading since September has centered on animals, yet revealed some of the darker choices of humankind. My first impulse was to skip the awful passages of the books, but then I would have remained uninformed. My second urge was to share what I’d learned on Lull: explain my sorrow, which would partially explain my infrequent posts. But that would have required further examination of the material. So instead, I just continued reading and feeling trapped inside a vortex of suffering—easily imagining the fear and pain inflicted upon the creatures and characters of both the nonfiction and fiction of my reading lineup. (See books listed at right in “Current Reading Lineup” and “Books Read in 2010.”)

The price of a rescue story is being made aware of the cruelty or neglect that necessitated the intervention. But some of us pay again in the form of guilt and shame for either not knowing what to do or not doing enough in such situations.

I’ve decided to take a break from the bleak and turn to short fiction from a few favorite novelists. Otherwise, my ability to recognize and savor beauty in the everyday may fade. And then, what’s the point?

[See the story behind “Hitler’s Horse.”]

In Which Lill Reaches An Unemployment Milestone

One year ago today, it was my last Friday at my job.

It was the day I would sign COBRA papers and accept the severance package I'd been offered two months before of one week of pay for every year of service. The same package had been offered to all the layoff victims. However, when I read through the release documents on January 30, 2009, the severance payment had been reduced by more than half.

As I was thinking this morning about the two men who had orchestrated this sleight of hand, I pulled a page from an old word-a-day calendar. The word for the day? Invultuation.

According to Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary, it means "attempting injury by sticking a doll with pins." How appropriate. And how enticing.

A year ago, when I first felt the sting of this betrayal, I asked a lawyer about it and he said the reduced severance was more than unethical—it was illegal. But it would cost me all of my severance money to sue and it could have dragged through the court system for years. Plus I worried about how a lawsuit would affect the remaining employees. Would there be more layoffs simply because I was trying to get what I'd been promised?

I decided to appeal to the conscience of these men. Tried to reason with them. But in the end, I did just what companies hope for in cases like this: I walked away without most of my severance, without any of the more than 80 days of time off I'd accrued, without hope of recovering any of this.

I've tried to let go of my anger toward these men. I try not to see them as cruel, irrational liars. The kindest perspective I can take is to regard them as desperate. They concocted a way to hang on to a little bit of the money the company was hemorrhaging and they used it. It was a small amount of cash for a company, but would have made a tremendous difference for me.

"The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape our history."

—Stephen Jay Gould

Whenever I check my bank balance—to make sure I can cover the next bill or buy a few groceries—January 30 stirs in my mind. I don't know if I'll ever forget it. I wonder if the two men will?


[The Voodoo Hoodoo Spellbook can be found at Planet Voodoo; the doll is from Voodoo Authentica.]