You
all probably know I am a teacher in addition to scientist and therefor I always
tell my students to ask themselves why things happen the way they do, much like a person with a scientific interest
is always asking himself why, why do things happen the way they happen, it’s
obviously not by coincidence or because of divine intervention, at least in the
majority of cases, when this same maxim is applied to human behaviour we are
talking about something called empathy and here we arrive at something that is
really missing in human relations, in Spain we say we know more sillyness in
other people’s homes than in our own, we
are probably a bit arrogant or perhaps what this saying really reflects is the
lack of emphaty, it is far more easier to critisize than try and understand why
things happen the way they do and maybe it’s simply the case that my
intelligence fails to understand certain human behaviours and instead recognize
my own limitations as a human. I have been critisizing the work of others, to
me particularly the whole world feels good unless they prove me otherwise, but
the truth is that it’s hard work admitting this, I will have my cake and eat
it, considering humans as animals, i.e., pure and good beings.
It’s
a sound though different philosophy and because of that I consider it a fact
that evil can not be installed in a group as large as the galgueros, but it is
rather a matter of ignorance, of tradition, something I have seen happening all
my life, but perhaps because I'm very innocent, or perhaps because I'm Spanish,
I refuse to admit that cruelty to animals is a dominant gene that persists in
the Hispanic genome, more than anything because if that were the case I would
have been affected by this very genome too and I know that is not the case.
This
is why I have started talks with the Federación Española de Galgos, the Spanish
Galgo Federation, precisely because I believe that by talking you can make
people understand and also it’s a matter of education, our valid speaking
partner is the FEG and it is more so because – and this will shock you even
more, there are things that we can reach agreements upon, among other things we
believe that the breeding of greyhounds must be controlled and supervised by
any official body, they should not breed animals without any controll, all the
dogs will be identified, will be vaccinated and will be bred under
circumstances that meet their natural needs.
On
the other hand is essential to show the galgueros they have a responsibility towards
their animals from when they are born until they die and that therefore all
those natural steps in all living beings have be conducted in a dignified and
legal form, we need to breed less animals and raise them better and when the
dogs reach the end of their careers as runners is when there is a problem, from
my point of view we need to care for them until the end of their natural life
but as that is not something that is going to happen, at least not for the time
being, we need to make a choice between legally killing them or leaving them in
a shelter so they are rehomed in families, because here we have to be
realistic, the shelters today unfortunately have not enough capacity to take in
all the dogs that are abandoned each year, which means some have to be
sacrificed in a way that is both legal and humane, which presents us with another problem: not
many vets are willing to euthanize healthy dogs, a difficult subject but one
has to respect their ethical reservations.
And
the dogs that end up in the shelter? Is it ethical for the galguero to leave
his dogs there, just like that? I am convinced that this doesn’t happen
elsewhere without in most of the cases a small fee that needs to be paid, for
me always too small, for the always large act of abandonement, so my point of
view is that the galgeuros cannot get into this process for free, nothing in
life is for free and all my experiences with galgueros taught me nothing
matters to them more than someone scraping the contents of their pockets, and
for this a very effective way to stop the breeding is making them scrape out
money every time, they won’t be dumping so many animals. They are breeding
indiscriminately because, as it occurred to me, when we went to the villages to
collect animals, they were training the younger dogs and as if it were a grace
they were saying, 'look these are going to lead the coming year'.
Kisses,
hugs, bites and loving licks.
Fermín.
(to
be continued)
