Abandoned animals are a national problem

Illustration only, but very illustrative

SPAIN (ECD) Are Spaniards aware of what it means to abandon an animal? Over 109,000 dogs and over 25,000 cats are abandoned in the country every year, which places Spain at the top of the list set up by Coordinadora Estatal de Protección Animal (CEPA, State (i.e.National) Coordinator for Animal Protection*). No mention of horses, donkeys, etc. etc. Although the number of abandoned dogs went down by 6.5% in 2010 compared to the previous year, the number of accidents caused by them in 2010 rose by 14.2% over 2009. Most accidents involving abandoned pets happen on roads: betqeen 2006 and 2010, the number went up by a whopping 87%, a total of 3,922 dead dogs. The federation of companies contracted to remove them, ACEX, says that they remove some 1,000 dead dogs from the road each day. The number of accidents with victims, involving animals, is over 15,870, of which almost 34% are caused by domestic animals. According to a survey earlier this year, the principal reasons for abandoning an animal are:>>>
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undesired pregnancies (14%), changed of house to smaller premises or moving to accomodation where animals are not allowed (13.7%) and loss of interest in the animal (11.2%). Financial factors, however, have grown exponentially, 8.7% in 2009 to13.2% in 2010.

Many campaigners or animal protection societies -distributed throughout the country without an effective umbrella organization such the UK's RSPCA, and weak as a result- agree that awareness and sensibilisation must be increased considerably. This, they say, should go together with much tougher laws and sanctions, which in turn means increased commitment from national, regional and local authorities. In the survey carried out in 2010, 54% of respondents did not know that they were fully responsible for any damage caused by their pets, for instance.

The law exists: your pets, dogs, cats and any other domestic animals, must be microchipped. But do the authorities apply it?

* We referred above to an organization called Coordinadora Estatal de Protección Animal. A Google search revealed that it does not even have a website. However, the search engine has over 55,000 results using those words, many of them quoting the statistics we do above, and a lot of them that have nothing whatever to do with it all. Nevertheless, there is something called Coordinadora Española de Protección Animal, using the acronym CEPA (but the web address, as you will see if you click on the link, is only 'www.proteccionanimal.org' - a crass mistake that makes it difficult for anyone to find it). It is a simple site that merely links animal protection entities and pats itself on the back for a number of 'campaigns' that hardly anyone has heard about.

Alas, this is typical of such semi-governmental organizations (and there's no evidence that this is so). We can only hope that it does not emerge that it has received uncountable thousands in state aid...

Curiously, not a single mentions is made in the study we refer to about the animals the 'coordinator' is supposed to be protecting, except, of course, as it impinges inconveniently on us humans: traffic accidents, mainly.

(WE AT CAMPOPULSE AND JIMENAPULSE HAVE RECEIVED INFORMATION AND PHOTOS OF 13 ABANDONED PUPPIES OF VARIOUS AGES IN A SINGLE WEEK. PLEASE WATCH THIS SPACE FOR PHOTOS AND CONTACT NUMBERS - WE WILL BE ASKING YOU TO CONSIDER TAKING AN ABANDONED DOG IN SO THAT IT CAN HAVE A GOOD HOME.)