Following article written by Vera Thorenaar Reddering who lives in Malaga Spain. Vera collaborates with many smaller shelters in Spain to help Galgos through a group called Greyhounds Rescue Holland. Charlotte del Rio also of Malaga helped organize the Fiesta again this year and it was enjoyed by approximately 200 people who attended! Thanks for the update Vera!
It was a bright and sunny day, the 6st of December. On this day Charlotte, who collaborates with GRIN, had organised a galgo event for the 3rd year in �el Refugio del Burrito� in order to promote the galgos as a family dog and to protest against their terrible mistreatment by many hunters and gypsies.
�El refugio del Burrito� is in a small village called Fuente de Piedra(Sevilla). This village is specially known because there is a lake where thousands of flamenco birds come every spring to bread. This year there were around 30,000.
�El refugio del Burrito� is a shelter for mishandled donkeys. It is a huge piece of land with lots of space for the donkeys. They are rescued from all around Europe: Italy, Greece, Turkey, Bosnia and, of course, Spain. They have their shelters to hide from heath and cold and more then enough space to walk around. It is really worthwhile a visit (www.elrefugiodelburrito.com)
The owner has 7 galgos and is very involved in all what's done to protect them. We came from Malaga and picked up Aurora from DEGalgos Barcelona from the airport. We almost didn�t get there because our car broke down! Three people and 1 galgo! Anyhow, we finally got there and there were already quite a lot of people and many galgos and other dog types. They all looked happy and exited.
There were several stands with many nice things to buy, all dedicated to the galgos, and the children were running around trying to fill in a paper with a picture of a donkey on which they had to put all the parts of the body (about 42!). Apart from that Charlotte organized a walk parade with galgos wearing coats made by Sandra Baas. Very sweet to see them walking proudly showing their coats!
Babeth from GreyhoundsRescueHolland had come from Holland to assist. For us it was the first time that we assisted but I was told that the first year (2007) there was only 1 stand, this year there were more and I hope that next year there will be even more. The money collected from the sales is divided under the assisting shelters and I saw that there were good sales! All together it was a very interesting day and the public was from all sort of ages, so not only youngsters! That promises!
I have to say that galgos are adopted every time more by Spanish families, specially in the north part of the country. So the message is getting there, slowly but steadily.... If you think that last year 50,000 (!) galgos were abandoned, there is still a very long way to go, but we will get there with all the help all you beautifull people give us!
Thanks for participating, GRIN!
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