From last November 13th an app from Ministerio del Interior (Spanish Home Office) called Alert Cops is available, and one of its multiple purposes is to report the Police in a quick way any case of animal mistreatment. This alert arrives immediately to Guardia Civil or Policía Nacional.

Alert Cops app is been working for several years as a way of reporting crimes such as gender violence, robberies, aggressions or illegal home occupation. Now, a new icon called “animal mistreatment” is been added to the app, so when clicking this icon we may report the alert via chat or voice message, and even attach pics or videos as an evidence.

Stopping animal mistreatment is everybody’s task, and one of the tools we have is articles 337 and 338 from Spanish Penal Code, about mistreatment crimes: causing injuries or death with no justification, abandoning or sexual exploitation to domestic or tamed animals.

Apart from the app, every case of major crime of animal mistreatment can be reported in different ways:

• Directly to local authorities: Local Police,

  Policía Nacional or Guardia Civil-Seprona

  officers, or Environmental agents.

• To local administration (Town Hall).

• To Court or Environmental Prosecutor.

New technologies help us to keep happy and healthy our pets, too. There are lots of apps at Google Play which advise us, for example, about the right daily quantity of food an animal needs, according to its peculiarities (breed, age, body condition, exercise, and even the trademark of dry food we use).

In our practice is quite common to find overfed pets, just because nobody is controlling which are its real food requirements. In many cases having a look to the bag of food, where you can see a table with feeding instructions is enough to improve dramatically your pet’s quality of life. “I just fill the bowl and my pet eats what it wants” is not a valid option in most cases. Of course, if you have any kind of doubt about how to feed properly your pet, one of the best options is to ask for Vet’s advice.

Another kind of apps related to pets is games for cats, which usually are very funny. They are suitable for phones and tablets, and they consist of figures which move, slowly or quickly, and suddenly appear and disappear from the screen, so the cat will try to catch them. The only thing we must care about is to make sure our device screen is strong enough, and the cat legs are reasonably clean.

Finally, we would like to wish everybody merry Christmas and a happy 2021, when, hopefully, life will be back to normal if NCoV-19 vaccines prove to be effective.

Clinica Veterinaria, Calle Holanda 9,  MASA Square, Gran Alacant

T: 966 698 569