About Greyhounds In Need

Greyhounds in Need exposed the terrible plight of the Spanish bred greyhounds, or galgos, in the mid 1990s.

Since then the charity, along with shelters in Spain, has rescued and exported to safety thousands of these dogs.

At the end of the hunting season galgos are traditionally killed or abandoned and the barbaric practices are now being recorded.

As EU rules on animal imports and health matters tighten, the dogs need to be taken in, monitored, cleaned and treated before they are exported. With sterilisation, this can take anything from four to eight weeks.

The dogs are totally neglected while hunting in Spain, are unvaccinated, full of parasites and subjected to Mediterranean tick and mosquito diseases, so the work is vital.

GIN carries out this work mainly in a vet’s kennels in Vic in the north east of Spain and to a lesser extent in the far southwest in Cadiz.

This ‘direct aid’ work in Spain takes the lion’s share of GIN’s annual income but GIN does help greyhounds on a smaller scale in Ireland and the UK.

How much does it cost?

· To process one dog from its ‘raw’ entry to GIN’s facilities in Spain to being fully rehabilitated, maintained and sterilised ready for export costs about £350 per dog.

· The transport abroad costs about £50

Every little you can give will help GIN rescue these dogs from appalling treatment. 

Our history

Greyhounds In Need's work for the greyhounds of Spain started with a secret visit to Mallorca in 1991 to observe conditions at the race track. Workers flew back with four Irish bitches whose miserable lives they were able to exchange for adoption as loved pets in the UK.

Over the next 6 years the charity did much to try to change the conditions at the four tracks in Spain, educating personnel, campaigning politically and rescuing as many dogs as it could. Eventually those tracks were closed. With the help of sister adoption groups in Europe, GIN was able to bring many greyhounds to northern Europe.

During this time GIN became aware of the cruel treatment of Spain's own hunting greyhounds, the galgos, which are traditionally killed or abandoned at the end of the annual hunting season. In 1995 a Spanish woman made an amateur film of hanged galgos in Granada, Southern Spain, and after visiting this area GIN sent copies of the film to Europe and the United States.

From 1992 onwards begun a steady trail of rescued greyhounds from Spain to individual greyhound lovers in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Holland and out of these single adoptions arose groups of other dog lovers whose lives also began to centre around helping the greyhounds of Spain.