Last year more than 12,000 hunting dogs were abandoned in Spain, according to data from a study presented by the Animalist Party (Pacma), which was very critical of the decision that this type of dog has been excluded from the Protection Law Animal recently approved by the Congress of Deputies.
Pacma has collected in this study the data provided by 194 animal protection entities and the result has been that during the year 2022 12,295 hunting dogs were abandoned, of which 5,544 were greyhounds and 4,191 hounds. The remaining 2,560 are distributed among pointers, pointers, alanos, and other breeds.
The statistics are even more worrying, since the investigation does not include the number of dogs collected by municipal services, councils and councils in towns with less than 5,000 inhabitants, nor the number of corpses found, euthanasias and killings carried out directly by the hunters.
In a statement published this Thursday, March 16, the president of the Animalist Party, Javier Luna, recalled that, in 2020, the formation had already published a similar study with the contributions of 98 protectors, which placed the figure at 8,588. abandoned dogs in 2019.
In Luna’s opinion, the search for data for 2022 has been more exhaustive and the participation of the entities has been greater, although he assures that the real figures of autonomous communities with a greater hunting tradition are missing: “The difference in participation from the autonomous communities with greater rural territory it has been very notorious and we know that it is due, in large part, to fear”, he maintains.
The report also reflects the money that animal protection entities have to invest during the reception, treatment and adoption of these dogs. Of the 194 collaborators, with a cost of between 1,000 and 10,000 euros per dog in most cases. 77.3% of the participating entities indicated that the average state of health of the dogs at the time of their arrival was between bad and terrible, requiring as a general rule, in addition to basic care such as food, vaccinations, identification and sterilization, attention veterinary medicine, medicines and even ethological attention.
The study presented by Pacma also offers a territorial vision of the abandonment of hunting dogs. Andalusia is the autonomous community with the most cases, almost half of those reported, followed by far by Castilla La Mancha, with 1,480 dropouts per year; the Community of Madrid, with 1,005; Canarias, with 787, and Galicia, with 699.
