400 Abandoned Animals Per Day

More than 10 years ago I became a foster home when I became aware of the urgent need suffered by hundreds of thousands of animals in our country.

We speak of an abandonment every 3 minutes, of kennels saturated with terrified dogs and cats that are killed after 10 days if no one offers them a chance, of the shoulders of our roads full of the corpses of animals that desperately fought to reunite with their families until the last moment.

Abandoned animals, a systemic problem

Since then, hundreds of abandoned animals have passed through my home : dogs that had been beaten, that had suffered attempted hanging, that were starving after being abandoned by their family in a kennel after 12 years by their side, cats burned, with their jaws kicked out, with run-over fractures, blind for not having received veterinary attention, hamsters covered in glue to suffocate to death, rabbits lying on the road, guinea pigs abandoned in a Metro station.

I have had to learn to heal open wounds, to give injections, to give pap with a syringe, to stop bleeding, to heal eyes that ooze.

But the most difficult thing about being a foster home is looking head-on at the human cruelty that materializes in each of those rickety bodies cowering in fear and pain. The shelters and protective associations also pay special attention to invisible wounds; the psychological and emotional, which are the deepest of abandonment.

Afterwards, each animal finds an adoptive family and begins a new life. So I think that there is nothing more beautiful than giving second chances and that the best revenge is to be happy.

More homeless animals than families willing to adopt them

But abandonment is a systemic problem that it is necessary to understand in order to adequately indicate the origin if we want to solve it.

The number of animals that need a home is much higher than the number of families willing to offer it and this is explained because, despite the chilling numbers of animals awaiting adoption in shelters, animals are still being raised for sale.

Then begins the endless cycle whereby the kennels display precious puppies in the windows of the shopping centers and sell them uncontrollably to anyone who feels the desire to pay for them.

Thus, thousands of families every year buy animals impulsively, thoughtlessly and without being adequately informed of everything that involves taking responsibility for the life of a new member who will most likely accompany us for more than a decade.

Puppy mills: the puppy mills

The buying and selling of animals is also a shady and insufficiently regulated business from which various scandals for animal abuse continually come to light. The “puppy-mills” or puppy factories are one of the phenomena that have been historically denounced from the world of animal protection.

Dark and dirty warehouses where females of all races live locked up giving birth again and again, sick puppies that die during transport or within days of being acquired by families due to untreated infections or viruses contracted due to poor hygienic conditions- sanitary.

It is common for hatcheries to keep animals in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, without receiving the necessary veterinary care or adequate socialization. To reduce cleaning work, dogs often live in cages with wire floors, causing deformed paws and skin wounds.

Many of the females used as breeders in these puppy mills are abandoned under extremely serious conditions or directly killed when their births are less numerous, generally after 4 years of age.

An example of this is Molly, a golden retriever whom I met when she appeared tied at the door of a shelter from a kennel. She was full of remains of excrement, tumors all over her body, her breasts were raw and she couldn’t stand up. Molly needed rehabilitation to learn to walk again because she had spent her life in a cage and atrophy of her muscles prevented her from coordinating even two consecutive steps.

End the sale to stop abandonment

The business of buying and selling animals is the main cause of the abandonment problem and it is for several reasons.

First of all, because it objectifies animals by exposing them as if they were objects in shop windows and conveying the idea that a dog, a cat, a hamster or a fish is something that is bought and returned like any other material good. He offers animals as things and the result is that a good part of society continues to treat them that way until the end of their days.

Second, because to access an animal it is only necessary to have enough money to pay for it. That is, there is no type of control, or monitoring, or obligation on the part of the buyer, so that the fate of the animals is completely uncertain.

The shelters are saturated, the municipal kennels kill animals daily due to lack of space, the shelters do not provide enough to help new cases, but the animal farms do not cease in their activity and continue to enrich themselves at the cost of safety and security. the lives of hundreds of thousands of animals.

Already in 2011 the city of Los Angeles was a pioneer in the United States by prohibiting the commercial breeding of dogs, cats, rabbits and chickens and their sale in pet stores. Instead, shelters work with licensed stores to put the shelter animals up for adoption. Also in Canada we find several examples such as Richmond, which in 2010 prohibited cats and dogs from being sold in pet shops, or Toronto, which in 2011 prohibited the sale of animals from hatcheries.

It is urgent to address the problem of abandonment in a country like Spain where, according to data from the Affinity Foundation, 137,000 animals were rescued from the streets in 2016.

This means that between the protective associations and the municipal kennels , almost 400 animals were cared for a day throughout the year. And this without counting all those who do not appear in the records because they were not lucky enough to receive help in time.

Take action and adopt

The animals we live with need policies that truly end abandonment :

• A strict regulation that prohibits the raising of animals for sale.
• Campaigns that make the population aware of the importance of sterilization to avoid unwanted litters as well as easy access to it for people with fewer resources.
• And, without a doubt, the promotion of adoption as the only acceptable option to include a new member in our families. Because friends are not bought, they are adopted.

And if you are looking for true love, it is waiting for you in the closest protector.