Greyhound
Compassion is honoured and proud to be connected with the Scooby shelter. We’ve worked with Scooby for about the last
18 years. We are a small charity in the
United Kingdom and we raise money for the Scooby galgos and greyhounds rescued
from greyhound racing in England and Ireland.
There are 25 registered
racetracks in the UK. They host 70,000
races per annum. Other tracks are unregistered and known as “flapper”
tracks. Bets are wagered at the races on
all tracks. This raises about £70m in
tax for the UK government.
Approximately 25,000 racing greyhounds are registered for racing in
Ireland and the UK annually. About
23,000 of these are bred in Ireland.
This means that thousands of greyhounds have to be bred each year to
produce those who meet racing standards.
The
greyhound racing industry and independent rescues are thought to rehome about
8,000 ex-racing greyhounds per annum in the UK. This leaves many
ex-racing greyhounds looking for loving homes.
It is estimated that about 10, 000 greyhounds go missing each year.
Greyhound Compassion’s fund-raising is quite small in scale and we try to
raise money without spending too much on expenses. It costs us 3.5 pence to raise one pound
sterling. We keep our overheads to a
minimum. We have a calendar of events
each year. We hold “jumble sales” (these
are sales of donated secondhand clothes, shoes, handbags, household items and
books) in the winter. In summer we sell
donated secondhand items at “car boot sales”.
These are a common feature of a Sunday morning in England. People can take their cars full of goods to a
designated field and sell to customers from the boot of their car. Most people sell to make money themselves but
we use the “car boots” to raise money for the greyhounds and galgos. We sell the clothes in really good condition
via Ebay on Greyhound Compassion’s own page.
We also have charitable street collections in town centres with our
greyhounds in the spring and summer. The
local council gives permission for us to hold these collections on an
occasional Saturday morning and we often benefit from donations from people
doing their shopping. These are the perfect opportunity to raise the profile of
the greyhound and spread the word about the plight of greyhounds and
galgos. In the height of the summer we
have a table at the annual fete in our village and hold a teddy bear tombola
for children and a tombola of gifts for adults. We are fortunate to have
supporters who arrange events in aid of Greyhound Compassion and this includes
lunch parties, an annual fun dog show and an annual sponsored walk. Supporters ask their friends and family to
pledge money to Greyhound Compassion and pay on condition that the supporter
completes the walk. All of these events
happen because we have a small and committed band of helpers who donate their
time and skills to help us raise funds for the rescued greyhounds and galgos.
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Occasionally a few of us visit the Scooby shelter to offer practical
help. We are always overwhelmed by
the number of dogs in Scooby’s
care. However, this stray dog problem is
not exclusive to Spain. We have the same
problem in England, reputedly a nation of dog lovers. It’s fair to say that we see more people
supporting dog rescue centres here than in Spain but we still have an enormous
problem of abandoned dogs. Our shelters
are full of staffordshire bull terriers, greyhounds, lurchers, alsatians,
collies and other mixed breeds. We have
an enormous puppy farming problem.
Recently we were really pleased to see a well-known British TV vet, Marc
Abraham, launch “PupAid” http://www.pupaid.org/ PupAid is the campaign to end the UK’s
cruel puppy farming industry and it presented No. 10. Downing Street with an e-
petition which collected over 110,000 signatures asking for a ban on puppies
and kittens sold without their mothers present.
Gaining more than 100, 000 signatures meant the issue could be debated
in Parliament which happened on Sept 4th in the Main Chamber of the House of
Commons. We hope this is the first step
in eradicating points of sale of irresponsibly bred puppies and kittens. We also hope that the day will come when a
similar initiative can be launched in Spain and other European countries. Looking back at the changes we have seen in
Scooby’s lifetime, it could well happen.
We remember the galgos being under threat during our first visits to the
shelter in 2000, we could not not take them into the Plaza Mayor for an
awareness event. In recent years,
Scooby has successfully held publicity events and on one occasion we saw a
young teenage girl stop to look at the pictures of the galgos on the Scooby
publicity board. She exclaimed to her
friends, “ah! Look it’s a galgo, how
sweet!” When we started we hoped but
were not confident that we would ever get a reaction like this.
