A group of Vancouver Island women are helping rescue Spanish greyhounds.
In Spain, greyhounds (or galgos) are used for hunting and routinely abused and killed after a season ends. Having heard about how the dogs were treated, Lynn Osborn made a trip to Malaga in Spain in 2016 while she was travelling in Europe to meet the dogs at a shelter dedicated to their protection. While there, she fell in love.
“One of the dogs just picked us. We came home from our trip and decided maybe he should be a Canadian. So we adopted him and he was a fabulous dog.”
After their first galgo died, Osborn and her husband have adopted two more and helped organize and establish a Vancouver Island group dedicated to finding families to adopt galgos.
Since the Island chapter started in May last year, the group have found 26 galgos a home with families in B.C. and Alberta. It is part of a larger, national non-profit called Extraordinary Galgos & Podencos, which has found new homes for 700 dogs across the country. The group works with shelters in Spain like the one Osborn visited in 2016, which send dogs to Canada. Osborn and her group hold an application process and find a families to look after the dogs.
With the pandemic pet phenomenon filling up shelters throughout the province, the province recently announced $12 million in extra funding for the BC SPCA, with Premier David Eby saying, “the need for the SPCA’s services has never really been greater in our province.”
Osborn said the group makes sure the dogs are going to families that are committed to looking after them, and since they started they haven’t had a single dog returned to them.
“For the most part, they’re couch potatoes. They don’t need a lot of running. What we do like is a good fenced yard and a good five, six feet fence. They can jump,” she laughed.
~ with files from Wolfgang Depner.
READ MORE: B.C. government dishes out $12 million for 4 new SPCA shelters
