A couple of days ago I received a phone call telling me that in a small town called Arroyo de la Encomienda, next to Valladolid, there was an abandoned galga with her puppies. Ma José went there to study the situation, and in fact, not only was the galga with her litter, but there was also a male, probably the father of the puppies. We decided to act as fast as we could, because the boy who had called us told us that the building workers of the area were a bit savages. So today Maria José, Eva and I went there with the trap cage to see if we could get them.

When we got there, the first thing we saw were the two adults in the middle of a waste ground. Not far from there were the puppies, one of them was dead, probably from a bottle thrown by one of the building workers. On this matter I must tell you that in the province of Valladolid there is a take in service paid by the county council, who doesn’t take care of more or less difficult cases like this one, so we’ve been observing an increase in the number of cases like this one, with bitches with their litter who spend a ling time abandoned, and then the puppies grow up wild, if we don’t take them in first. But as usual, the people responsible of this don’t care about animal welfare, it’s just a matter of taking care of the file, and the cheaper the better. But let us keep on with the “hunting”.

When we arrived Ma José picked one of the puppies and went to look for the mother, so that she would follow her, and she did. In the meantime Eva and I took care of the rest of the litter, we put the trap cage and as a bait we used a couple of puppies and some food, thinking that the maternal instinct would make the galga fall into the trap. We were wrong, the lady lied down beside the cage and waited till the puppies came out, and so they did. One of them came out and the mother took him away, so we had to change the strategy and use food, which was more effective than the puppies and after half an hour the tempting can food did its job and the mother was in the cage. Twenty minutes later the male did the same thing, and now the happy family is safe with us. The mother, the father and the six puppies, it’s just a matter of patience.

Fermín

PS: By the way, I haven’t got pictures of the rescue because Maria took the camera for an event that she we’ll let you know about soon, and I want to thank Louise Coleman for the trap cage she gave us some years ago, and which is really useful.