SOME QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT ASK YOURSELVES
Why animals are still sold in shops?
Why do people buy animals just for abandoning them later?
61,524 dogs were registered at Real Sociedad Canina de España (Spanish Kennel Club), in 2016. This number only includes pure breed dogs, legally bred and sold in Spain, vaccinated, microchipped and everything. It’s a big number, but it’s just the iceberg point.
104,447 dogs were abandoned in Spain in 2016. This number doesn’t include cats nor dogs that didn’t enter a shelter (because they died, for example knocked by a car before anybody was able to take them to the shelter), so they don’t appear at statistics.
On December 2nd there will be a demonstration in Alicante (at 2 Federico Soto Avenue), from 11:00 to 13:00, for asking people not to buy dogs but adopt them.
Most dogs in Spain are purchased via Internet, from non-professional breeders, with no sanitary warranty nor any kind of legal document. No doubt pets business is very important.
But the thing is, not only pets selling for payment is a business, but also sometimes animal shelters. Average citizen nowadays is sensitive and worries about animal welfare, so doesn’t want to see abandoned animals running free at the streets. Town Halls are responsible for removing these animals from the streets, and what they normally do is to hire the services of corporations which capture the animals and take them to their facilities. These corporations, as anyone can imagine, don’t work for free: they charge Town Halls for capturing and accommodating the animals they capture from the street. The more animals are living at their facilities, the more money they earn. So, what happens when all the cages are occupied?
Last November 11th Malaga Court imprisoned the former owner of “Parque Animal” (an animal shelter placed in Torremolinos), convicted of “massive dogs and cats slaughtering”. Unfortunately, as very well informed people keep saying, this is not an exceptional case. There is practically no control about the number of animals that are captured and find a new home at animal shelters, and this lack of control allows the business grow more and more.
We would like Christmas is a time for relax and joy, and not an alibi for buying an animal we are not ready to have.
It’s always a good time to adopt an animal and to report anybody mistreating those defenceless alive beings.
We would like no animal is sold in a shop or abandoned at the street next year.
Happy new year to everybody.
Liliana Aldeguer Cerdán col 793
English translation by Sergio Reina Esteban col 747
