In our daily work, we repeatedly encounter things that are unbelievably terrible. We often have to witness how cruel humans can be. Time and again, we are shocked by what animals have to endure. We are often on the brink together with the animals and no longer understand the world. Many animal lovers and animal rights activists have similar experiences and sometimes tell us even worse stories.
You would still hope that nothing could upset you. But we recently learnt that this is a big fallacy.
"If you don't use your eyes to see, you will need them to cry"
— Jean-Paul Sartre
In the course of our research to help the galgos, thousands of which die every year, we travelled to Cordoba, Spain, in mid-May 2024. At this point, we had already gathered many impressions and felt we had achieved a lot. Before heading home, we had to visit a perrera. A place that is often referred to as an “animal shelter”. In reality, however, these are killing centres that usually only keep the animals for between 7 and 21 days. At the end of this period, they are “euthanised”. For cost reasons, anaesthesia is often not used, which results in an agonising agony.
The Gut Aiderbichl team arrived on site with an uneasy feeling. Back in 1991, the then 39-year-old Michael Aufhauser brought WDR journalists very close to a perrera. The documentary “The Suffering of Animals” showed the extent of the cruelty in Spanish animal shelters for the first time.So we walked up to the building,whichwas painted in cheerful colours and asked us, wwhatwe would find? At no point were we prepared for the force of the emotions that then overwhelmed us.
The dogs were safely housed in their kennels, had access to fresh water and were fed. But the impending disaster seemed close enough to touch. We slowly realised that this was a false sense of security. A safety with an expiry date!
Every time we looked into a dog’s eyes, our hearts broke. For many dogs, their fate seemed pre-programmed. For many of these dogs, no one will probably be interested, and some dogs seemed to suspect this. They had already given up and were lying apathetically in their runs. Waiting for the end. Others could not and would not come to terms with their situation and ran around like wild tigers. Some didn’t even dare to go out, overwhelmed by their situation.
Rarely before have we felt this helpless. Overwhelmed by the knowledge that many dogs will probably not have a chance, we could not suppress our tears.
“Look and help” – we take this credo of Michael Aufhauser to heart every day and try to act accordingly. After consulting with Dieter Ehrengruber, we have decided to help at least a few dogs.
But who gets to go and who has to stay behind: This is probably the hardest decision anyone should ever have to make. There is no right or wrong – there is only life and death.
