2024-01-22 13:28:08
The excessive humanization of pets in a society that increasingly treats them as family members can lead to “practices that do not respect their physical and psychological well-being” due to the tendency to “forget their natural needs and behaviors”, since following They are all animals. This has been warned by Andrea Milá, spokesperson for the French platform Lend me your puppy, which already has 70,000 users in Spain and “facilitates a shared care system between owners who need help with their dog and people looking to meet dogs”, so that a person without a pet “can experience the responsibility of having one” before committing full time.
In this way, volunteers can know first-hand how to treat an animal correctly before being carried away by an “impulsive adoption” of what is often mistakenly perceived as an object, when “a dog is a living being with needs and emotions, not an item that can be given as a gift. This impulsiveness translates at the beginning of the year, even on a date like today when the day of San Antón – patron saint of animals – is celebrated, in the abandonment of pets that have been given as gifts at Christmas and that, According to the latest study by the Affinity Foundation, there were more than 288,000 dogs and cats collected by shelters in Spain in 2022.
The availability to take care of the animal is one of the causes of abandonment, but also its economic cost, the head of marketing and communication for the pet health insurer Santévet, Eva Ortín, told EFE.
Although there are officially 31 million pets in Spain, Ortín recalled that “the percentage of animals with insurance is still very low”, so the person who wants to adopt one should take into account the need to invest in this sense. In addition, it is necessary to collect information on all aspects related to their care and health, not only the shelter or food, but also “specific needs such as their routines or illnesses.”
In this sense, Milá has stated that “promoting public health insurance for pets would be advantageous and would make veterinary expenses easier for owners, promoting responsibility in the care of pets,” which is why he has defended the creation of a government program that make “these services more accessible.” Regarding how the application of the new Animal Welfare Law is affecting, he considered that it is “an important step towards their protection” since, although Spanish society “has made significant progress in respect for animals, we still face great challenges”.
Ortín has also highlighted this new regulation as “an advance” and, although “the greatest objective of the law is to fight once morest the abuse and abandonment of animals”, it has generated other benefits such as “for example the disappearance of the category of dog potentially dangerous” that harmed certain dog breeds.
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