Hound Problems

This post isn’t full of pictures because, basically, it’s serious.  However, it still has elements of ‘no me lo puedo creer’, but then it would, wouldn’t it…?

As regular readers know, we have three dogs, all hounds.  Two we brought with us from the UK and the other (our little ‘Scavenger’) adopted us back last year.  Our two ‘Brit dogs’ are large hounds – a Greyhound and a Saluki.  Up until very recently, although Savenger had been widely ignored (or verbally abused…) by the villagers, our two ‘Brit hounds’ had been well-regarded, with comments ranging from ‘muy bonitas’ to ’son muy rapido, no? Me gustan mucho!’  But things have changed, we hope not for long, but who knows?

A few days ago, our little Scavenger got into a fight outside our house with another village dog (who, I have to say, had been antagonising her for weeks).  I was upstairs and this all happened rather quickly, but my husband rushed outside to get her in, but, in his haste, left the door ajar … and our Saluki decided to investigate.  It appears that he decided that Scavenger needed a helping hand…

By this time, the gentleman who owns the other village dog was trying to kick Scavenger away, while my husband was trying to grab her, whilst shooing our Saluki back into the house.  Our Greyhound, at this point, decided to amble out to investigate, only to get a kick for her troubles from the gentleman.

At this point, the gentleman panicked (understandably, considering the noise now ensuing – mainly from his own dog, still trying to take a piece out of Scavenger).  He put his hand down among the two scrapping dogs to ‘rescue’ his perro.  It is never a good idea to put your hand amongst fighting dogs.  The gentleman received a bite.

In all the furore, my husband had grabbed Scavenger and shood our other two hounds back inside.  He didn’t notice that the gentleman had been bitten (and neither did I, watching from the upstairs window), but my husband had received a nip himself, from the gentleman’s dog.  In any case, by this time the gentleman was rapidly walking away, carrying his still snapping and barking dog, and cursing loudly.

As soon as my husband had ‘had a word’ with our three hounds, and I had washed his hand and ensured the dog nip wasn’t deep, he rushed up to the gentleman’s house to apologise and to check if everything was ok.  But he received no reply.  Neither did he receive a reply when he tried again the following morning.

However, the following evening there was a knock on the door.  It was the gentleman from up the street, speaking very rapidly in spanish, while gesticulating wildly and waving a heavily bandaged thumb in the air.  We invited the gentleman in and were (secretly) relieved that our Saluki and Scavenger bore him no ill will for the day before’s kicking and welcomed the gentleman warmly.  Our Greyhound (having a slightly larger brain and thus a better memory), was less pleased to see him, but restrained herself to a rumbling growl now and again at said gentleman (after all, she must have felt a sense of injustice here…).  After much deliberation, trying to be friendly, diplomatic and apologetic all at the same time as attempting to translate, we ascertained that we were to meet up with the gentleman in two day’s time at the village medico, and to bring our dogs’ papers with us.  The gentleman then pointed to our Saluki and said it was most important that his papers were in order, as he was the one who had bitten him…

I asked the gentleman if he was absolutely sure that this was el perro who had bitten him, but he was adamant.

Now I am not at all sure about this.  From my viewpoint, it was not our Saluki who did the damage and from the position of the dogs, it was much more likely to have been the man’s own dog, or Scavenger.  Plus, we know our hounds.  Yes, they have sharp teeth and rapid instincts, but it is those instincts which make me sure they would not knowingly bite a human.  They can withdraw just as fast as they can bite if the object they are aimed at isn’t the correct one.  But, the man did put his hand down among fighting dogs, so I can never prove that it wasn’t our Saluki who did this.

Be that as it may, we still had the distinct possiblity of a major crisis on our hands.  Our Saluki was being accused of biting a human and he was also (according to our rough translation of the man’s rapid spanish) being depicted as ‘a dangerous dog’.

Very recently, the Government of Andalucia has toughened up its laws on ‘Dangerous Dogs’.  It has now defined 15 ‘dangerous breeds’, plus given other catch-all criteria for dogs considered dangerous which do not fall among these breeds.  They have also instigated a wide scale advertising campaign to publicise these changes.

Owning a ‘dangerous dog’ now entails cripplingly high insurance fees, strict regulations about where the hound can be kept, rules on when it can leave your house, when it can be walked, muzzled of course and with no other dog present, and who is allowed to walk it (a person considered strong enough to control it).  Plus immediate castration.  If all of these measures are not carried out immediately the dog is defined as dangerous (or if you know it is covered already by the ‘dangerous dog’ criteria), it will be removed from your property by the policia and destroyed.

None of our hounds come under the ’specified breeds’ of dangerous dog, but our Saluki, and our Greyhound, could, if the local authorities deemed, come under a couple of the other ‘catch-alls’; our Saluki by height and weight (only just though), and our Greyhound by height.  There are many catch-all items on the list and no vet (or anyone else we have checked with) seems to know whether a dog has to fit all these criteria, some of them, or whether only one item from the list can be used to define them as ‘dangerous’ if the person doing the defining so chooses.  We are, of course, also hindered by the fact that we speak little ‘legal spanish’ and would be hard put to debate the issue in front of any authority in the area.

This was turning into what could be a nightmare situation, which could involve not only our Saluki, but our Greyhound too.

Our two ‘Brit Hounds’ have been through a lot during our move to Spain.  The long ferry journey, travelling thousands of miles in a motor home, waking up each morning for a while and being somewhere completely new (often with dogs in the area who were not friendly to strangers), living for months on end in our motorhome when we were stranded on the campsite waiting for our house to be completed, witnessing our stress as so many things went wrong, finally settling in to a new home, but in a strange country with strange (and sometimes uncomfortable and even frightening) weather, plus many more situations they have had to face.  And throughout all of this they have remained stoic, good natured and incredibly loyal.  Yet now it seemed they could be victims of something which was not their fault (it was Scavenger, after all, who had started the fight) and we, with our poor language skills and ‘outsider’ status, would be hard pressed to prevent things turning out badly for them.  What on earth could we do about this?

Well, after a tearful (on my part) discussion, we got down to considering our options.  We could get in touch with the local ‘hound rescue’ centre and ask for their help, but the owner of this (very good) operation is the wife of our errant ‘project manager’, so we did not know just what the reaction would be to our pleas for help.  Although, I have to say here that, when it comes to hounds, I think they would have helped all they could.  But that option would probably mean letting them have our dogs, which we didn’t want: more stress for our hounds and, selfishly, for us.

In my distress, I even considered booking a quick flight back to the UK, taking our two hounds with me, but where I would stay with them when I got there was another question (although there would be Greyhound and/or Saluki Rescue if all else failed).  But that would leave my husband on his own in Spain with no one (apart from Scavenger, of course, who he was not particularly happy with at that moment) to keep him company and me in the UK, far away from home.  Not a great option either.

So what else was there?

My husband went on the net and contacted various ‘ex pat’ forums, who have members who are able to answer and give advice on issues like this.  We waited for the reply.

The next day there were several replies to my husband’s cry for help.  The general consensus was ‘front up at the medico’s tomorrow and hope for the best’ and get back to them if there were any problems … oh yes, ‘and take a translator with you’.

Finding a translator was going to be a problem.  However, there is one couple in our village where the husband is a Brit and the wife is Spanish.  We contacted them.  To our relief, the wife agreed to come with us to the medico’s the next morning, to help translate between us all, but her English isn’t much better than our Spanish, so her husband gave us the telephone number of an Englishman in the next village who speaks fluent Spanish and who helps people out in emergencies like this.  My husband rang him.

The ‘translator man’ was helpfulness itself.  However, he was offering a helping hand to another English couple, so could not go to the medico’s with us the next day, but suggested that we get our ‘translator’ to ask that the meeting be held the next day, when he would be able to be present.  So, we had to initially front up and face the consequencies with our Spanish translator and hope for the best,

The next morning, we and our translator turned up bright and early at the village medico’s, us with severe trepidation, her with her typical friendly, laid back attidude.  “Esta bien”, she told us, “No es problema”.  We were not so sure…

Eventually the gentleman arrived and hesitantly stood next to us in the queue (the medico was late), but our translator soon put him at his ease and even got him smiling.  She then told his tale to other waiting patients, who commiserated with him, but told him it was his own fault for putting his hand down among fighting dogs.  The man mellowed a little, and by the time we got into the medico’s office, he was agreeing that it was an accident.  He was still insisting, however, that  it was our Saluki who had bitten him, so his papers had to be checked, if only to ensure that his rabies jabs were up to date (they are).

The medico filled in the mandatory health forms, checked our Saluki’s papers (asking us what on earth a Saluki was), rang the Area Health Authority to give them her findings, and then told us that everything was in order, and ‘no problema’.  Our very helpful translator repeated this to us in her halting English, emphasising that ,”esta bien.  No problema”.  Outside again, we thanked her profusely and she again repeated “no problema” and went on her way.  We gave the gentleman a lift back to his house and he was laughing and joking too (probably at our expense, we can’t be sure..) and when we got indoors, we both gave a long sigh of relief and a long hug to our hounds.

But it wasn’t over.

The next morning we received a telephone call from the local health authority.  My husband was to go to what we translated as ‘la vetinaria’  that morning, bringing our Saluki with him and all his papers.  Again, we feared the worst.

Off went my husband with our Saluki, leaving me at home very tearful, with our other two hounds, who also looked very dejected (one of their number leaving the house on their own is never good…).  He turned up at ‘la vetinaria’, very concerned about what he intended to do to our Saluki, only to be told that he had got the telphone message wrong.  The business in question was about ‘la vetinaria’, but it was actually being dealt with by the local health authority offices, so off he went again.

Outside the local authority offices another medico was waiting.  She looked at our Saluki’s papers, filled in some data on her laptop and came over to see the culprit.  Of course, he was putting on his ‘I am a beautiful, appealling Saluki’ look, and the medico made a huge fuss of him and declared him ‘muy bonito’.  She told my husband  “esta bien – no problema”,  but if our Saluki showed any signs of bad health in the next 21 days to contact them immediately, and then bid him and our Saluki farewell as she left her office for the day, her day’s work done.

So I guess all the authority issues were about ensuring the gentleman remains in good health and has not contracted rabies from our Saluki, and I hope that this will be the end of the matter.

But of course we now have a dog on a local authority list, noted as having bitten a human.  We must be vigilant in ensuring that he doesn’t commit any other misdemeanor, or be seen as dangerous in any way within our village.  We are now worried every time we take our dogs for a walk, in case they are confronted by another village dog.

It’ll be a long while (if ever) before we rest easy over this ….