El Arca de Noé, in Albacete, Spain, helps dogs like these. Galgos, the Spanish Greyhound, are disposed of at the end of each hunting season. Some are hanged from trees, others are abandoned in far away places with a leg tied to their neck so they can't follow. Some are dumped along remote road sides, while others, like this one, are tossed down a well to die of starvation.

(3/10/04 from María, of El Arca de Noé in Spain)

"The 11th of February Civil Guard called us when they hear the dogs in a well in an isolated area where immigrants use to live in some empty houses. We think the immigrants were not guilty of this, but gypsies, which is more usual in Albacete.

"When they were picked up from the well, they were dying of starvation and dehydratation. They didn’t want to eat. They were hospitalized with serum for three days. Then, they started to eat soft food. Now, they are in a special kennel with other two dogs, and they all eat special cooked food, but they have started to eat feed. Now Fénix and Luna are getting stronger, but Luna has leishmania.

"They both were in the photograph in the well, but the male was under the woods and the rubbish. I send you a photograph of the male now in our shelter."

3/04/04 Our first email from María Izquierdo of El Arca de Noé.

Dear greyhounders:

We are very pleased of hearing from you.

I am María Izquierdo, member of the board of this Association. I speak and write English more or less, so it is going to be easy for us to communicate.

I’ll make an introduction about us and our galgos.

We have a shelter in Albacete with about 300 animals. Sometimes we have problems of space, although we have lots of adoptions here and in Germany, trough other Association. (We have an input of about 1.200 animals and an output by adoptions of about 800, each year).

The most worrying problem we have with the galgos is that they are very mistreated in this area, so we don’t give them in adoption, and the German association which collaborates with us, hardly ever works with big animals.

Moreover, there are hundreds of this galgos abandoned in very bad conditions near us during the year (in the province of Albacete).

We can not control such number of galgos in our shelter. They are constantly stolen.

The last years we have been carrying them to Patricia, in Alicante. I suppose you know her. She has contacts with galgos protectors in other countries and gave our galgos in adoption.

Now she has problems and can not take our galgos. This situation is very critical for us and the galgos from Albacete. In two weeks 16 galgos has been stolen in our shelter, almost always females for breeding. We have denounced this situation but we are not covered. The police say that they don’t have time to be there always. Of course, we have no money to hire a guard 24 hours service.

When they just don’t need the galgos, they throw them in wells, so that they die from starvation, or they tie a leg to their neck, so that they can abandon the galgos far away and they can not follow them. In other cases they hold them from trees.

I send you photographs of the last rescue of galgos.

We don’t want our galgos in their hands. So, the first thing we need is a quick exit for our galgos. We can not wait for making photographs and sending them looking for adoption, because in this period, if they are healthy, they are stolen. We could do it if we had any safe place to have them out of Albacete, but not here. We tried to do it for Mo, in Barcelona, but they were stolen before we sent the photographs.

Now we only have about 30 galgos and we do voluntary turns for looking for them, but it is not possible for us to cover all the time. They are going to be many more because it is time to abandon: haunting is finishing here and breeding too.

Apart from that, whatever material for our shelter, like kennels, vet material...that you could send us would be great.

The biggest problem in this Community (Castilla-La Mancha) is that the government has not laws about microchips or castration. We want to castrate every dog which came into our shelter, but we don’t have money for doing it. Maybe you can help us sending vets for the first 300 that we have and what is the difficult thing to start.

Two or three weeks ago we were speaking with Scooby in Medina del Campo (Spain), I suppose you know them too, for carrying them galgos, but Fermín said that they had to be only females, and they all had been stolen the weeks before. Now we have more and we are going to try again.

Thank you very much for contacting us and offer your help. Whatever you can do will be fantastic for us and for them.

Best wishes,

María Izquierdo.

A.P.A.P. de Albacete “El Arca de Noé”

Donations to the Galgos are always welcome and greatly appreciated. If you have any gently used collars, coats, leads, veterinarian supplies, dog beds, or turn-out muzzles, please consider donating them to the Galgos in Spain who are in desperate need. If you can help financially, send your check made out to GPA-NMGC (please include a notation that you wish your donation to go to Paws Across The Pond) and mail it to:

Candy and Jerry Beck
7220 Cascada Rd. NW
Albuquerque, NM 87114