Dobleve

As many of our friends know, one of our dogs (Emmo) died last July and we have been missing him ever since. We knew there would come a time we’d want to find another dog to join us both because we really love dogs and we also think that as curmudgeonly as our other dog (Milo) is, he’s happiest when he has another dog in the “pack”. So after making sure we spent time remembering and missing Emmo, we knew we were ready.

Knowing that we wanted to adopt a dog rather than buy a pure bred we began to ask around about the best way to do this in Spain. We got a lot of interesting advice including “join one of those private associations” (huh?!) and “just steal one from one of the drunks or hippies by the fish market”. We finally met (through a friend) a British woman who volunteers at a dog shelter and arranged to go there with her. We could only go there by appointment and with another person and we were not given the address. We later learned that it’s because so many dogs are abandoned at shelters while no one is there, and many are killed in traffic or are just never seen again, that they will not publish their location.

The shelter is run by a Spanish woman who essentially supports the whole thing herself. (She lives in the city, has a full time job and is raising a family too.) At the shelter we met several volunteers highly dedicated to animal rights / the humane treatment of animals. Truthfully it was heartbreaking and we wanted to take home way more than one dog. There were somewhere between 50-70 dogs living there. Many were being rotated in and out on a regular basis to help socialize them with families (I think there are only 2 households helping with this though and the worry was that some would not get the attention in time and would never be able to live with people).

A team of British veterinarians had just been there to spay and neuter the dogs (every bit of it on a volunteer basis). Most of the dogs are adopted by German families and eventually make their way to Germany! Apparently many of the dogs adopted in Spain are eventually returned and they have had a lot of trouble with successful Spanish adoptions.

Recognizing that there is a lot we don’t know, we have noticed some apparent cultural differences in ideas about animals, especially dogs as pets. The shelter made us sign an agreement to neuter Roscoe when he’s old enough (with which we more than agree) but several of our Spanish friends have expressed absolute disdain at this decision because among other things, “the dog will get fat if castrated”. One friend explained that the way they kept their dog from getting pregnant was that when she was a puppy they would scare the bejesus out of her whenever she got near another dog. She never got pregnant and refuses to get anywhere near another dog. Also, many of our Spanish friends cannot fathom why we would crate train a young dog. Similarly many many people do not use a leash or restrain their dogs in any way while in public.

One of Roscoe’s first nights home with us we walked him far too near to a major plaza (because we were helping some lost tourists find it). Roscoe was on a leash but was immediately attacked/surrounded by about 8 dogs that were running free. We dropped his leash (while I was yelling in an aggressive and threatening way I’ve never known I had in me) and he took off with at least 4 of the dogs giving him serious chase. When we finally separated all of the dogs the other owners proceeded to beat their dogs while yelling at them. Most of it was over before it started but we continue to have to think carefully about how to be responsible with animals and their treatment in a culture where so many things are different.

It’s too soon to really know Roscoe (our good friend Felicity tells us after about a 2 week honey moon we’ll meet the real him.) What we know so far is that he’s very friendly (and doesn’t bite for all of you who know Milo!). He’s about 9 months old. He was adopted once by a Spanish family but was abandoned outside the gates of the shelter the first day of Semana Santa (Holy Week), presumably because the family was going on vacation (?) which seems to happen quite often we’ve heard. He does all kinds of dog things – jump up on you when he’s excited, wander all over the place while on a leash causing near catastrophic knee collisions, been caught carrying around a flip flop or two… nothing that isn’t totally to be expected or that we won’t be able to work on, and we’re very happy to have him home!