ohmidog!

America isn’t the only country where greyhounds are exploited and mistreated.

We may have our racing tracks, and those blood farms, but there is some even more horrendous treatment of greyhounds going on in Spain, where more than 50,000 galgos, or Spanish greyhounds, are destroyed each year — most often in cruel fashion.

Spanish greyhouds come from different lineage than American greyhounds, but they are very similar and have the same shy, sweet and gentle dispositions.

In parts of Spain, they are used for hunting, but when they start to slow down, they are cruelly disposed of by some Spanish hunters, or “galgueros” — at a rate of about 50,000 per year.

Most of the dogs, called “galgos,” are used for one or two years and then discarded, and those who perform poorly are often tortured to death

The Spanish government has mostly ignored the issue, but perhaps an upcoming documentary, now in editing, will cause enough of a stir to lead it to take some action.

“YO GALGO is a feature film about life and traditions in the villages, about an invisible genocide taking place while the authorities look the other way,” the maker of the movie says on its website. “It’s about the tireless people working to rescue these dogs, and about the new and modern Spain versus the conservative and traditional one.”

Yeray Lopez Portillo describes the documentary as “an investigative feature film that paints a picture of the consequences of these hobbies for hundreds of thousands of galgos. It shows us a glimpse into human nature through the use of these dogs; the abuse, the tradition and the silence kept by people and institutions about it. A clash between the modern and old Spain.”

His kickstarter campaign explains:

“Every year healthy galgos are killed, beaten to death, drowned or abandoned when they no longer live up to their owners’ expectations. The breeders, the so called galgueros, breed hoping to end up with the fastest dog to compete and hunt the hare, but overbreeding leads to the ‘throwing out’ of thousands and thousands of galgos every year.”

Those who have proved to be good hunters are taken to shelters to be euthanized when they’ve lost their edge. Those who have not face being burned with acid, dragged behind cars, sacrificed to fighting dogs, skinned alive and buried alive.

The most famous torture is called the “piano dance,” which involves hanging the dog by the neck with the feet just touching the ground as it struggles to breathe until it is strangled to death by its own movements.

As explained in an article in The Dodo, the breeders and hunters maintain the torturing “washes away the dishonor” of having a dog with poor hunting skills.

Because the galgos are regarded under Spanish law as working dogs, they are excluded from the laws relating to pets.

The Spanish government did pass laws in 2004 concerning abuses and neglect, but they have not been used to prosecute anyone.

Hunting with greyhounds also takes place in Portugal, Northern Ireland and in the United Kingdom, but the cruelest abuses are in Spain.

For more information, visit galgorescue.org or the Yo Galgo Facebook page.

Squish, an Ohio dog whose face was left twisted and contorted by what veterinarians believe was a severe beating, will be a guest on “The Rachel Ray Show” today.

Appearing via a video call with the once-abused dog will be the woman who rescued him and to whom he now belongs, a veterinary intern at the time who now practices in San Antonio.

Squish was a four-month-old stray when he ended up in the Cuyahoga County Animal Shelter in 2016, with a fractured jaw, fractured skull and missing one eye.

After two months, given his appearance made him unlikely to be adopted, and given he was barely able to eat, the shelter added him to the list of dogs to be euthanized, but sent him to VCA Great Lakes Veterinary Specialists for a second opinion.

When intern Danielle Boyd was sent to carry him into the exam room, she was taken with his friendliness and trust. “I was enamored by this little one-eyed pup who clearly endured so much pain,” she told the dodo.

Boyd decided to bring him home that night, just to give him a break from the shelter.

He has been her’s ever since.

Even though she was just a week away from a scheduled to move to Texas to finish her veterinary residency, she adopted the dog and a series of extensive surgeries began.

Less than 36 hours after Squish’s surgery, they drove from Ohio to Texas. “That became the beginning of our many adventures together,” she says. Boyd had lost her dog just days before she met Squish.

After several surgeries, Squish — who had difficulty seeing out of his one eye and whose injuries prevented him from being able to eat — is chewing on tennis balls, munching dry dog food, and apparently carrying around sticks as crooked as his face.

Vets suspect blunt force trauma led to his misshapen head. Both his skull and upper jaw had been fractured by a blow, or a series of them.

Squish now spends his time being the mascot for the veterinary hospital where Boyd works.

“Employees come visit him in my office when they need a little Squish love,” Boyd said. “Squish also shows clients whose pets are facing eye removal surgery how happy he is with one eye.”

Ray gave Boyd a lifetime supply of products from her Nutrish pet food line, and, along with everyone else in the studio audience, a $100 PetSmart gift cards.

(Top photo by Kin Man Hui /San Antonio Express-News, bottom photos by Danielle Boyd)

An abused dog who ended up in a shelter and was adopted last year led her new owner to a three-year-old girl found naked and shivering in the woods behind their home.

Peanut’s owners said the dog “started going crazy” while inside the house, barking and running up and down the stairs. When they let her out, she barreled into the woods, with her owner following.

She ran straight to the little girl, who was curled up in a ditch.

The dog owner wrapped the girl in a sweatshirt, brought her back to his house and called 911.

The girl was rescued around 11:15 a.m. Friday, near Rapid River in the Upper Peninsula’s Delta County, Mlive reported.

Delta County sheriff’s deputies said temperatures were hovering around freezing when the naked girl was found. Officers found the girl’s parents after going door-to-door.

They described the home as “unsafe and unsanitary,” and called Child Protective Services workers to take custody of the girl and another young girl in the home.

Prosecutors are reviewing what charges might be filed in the case.

One of Peanut’s owners said the girl was quiet as they awaited the arrival of police and the ambulance.

“The little girl could only say one thing — ‘doggie,'” she wrote in a post to the Facebook page of the shelter they adopted Peanut from.

Once named Petunia, the dog was brought to the Delta Animal Shelter last April with two broken legs and broken ribs.

The former owner was recently convicted of animal abuse, the shelter said.

“Petunia has a great new home with a wonderful family….and this formerly abused dog has now saved the life of a little girl,” the shelter wrote.

(Photo: Delta Animal Shelter)

One abused dog comforted another this week at a veterinary clinic in South Carolina, and this saintly image of their meeting is one for the scrapbook.

Sammie, on the table, is a three to four-month old puppy who has dragged behind a car, shot in the head and spray painted.

He was dropped off at a shelter by a woman who claimed he was a stray and said she had brought him there “because he wouldn’t die,” according to Rescue Dogs Rock NYC.

While that’s still a possibility, Sammie, a boxer mix, is being treated for a bullet hole in his head and two seriously injured legs, one of which he may end up losing. He underwent three hours of surgery on Tuesday.

Earlier this week, another dog at the clinic, a border collie named Simon, found his way into the room where Sammie was, and offered what — to human eyes — appears to be some comfort.

Simon also was a victim of some abuse and neglect, and is currently being treated for mange.

Both were rescued from shelters in South Carolina, and ended up at the same vet in Columbia, thanks to the efforts of Rescue Dogs Rock NYC.

You can read more about Sammie’s story on the organization’s Facebook page.

Contributions to help pay for Sammie’s continuing medical care can be made through a YouCaring page set up by Rescue Dogs Rock.

Rescue Dogs Rock is a not for profit animal rescue founded in 2015 whose mission is to raise awareness of the plight of homeless animals — both those in shelters and those who are strays.

(Photos: Rescue Dogs Rock NYC)

Six dogs who, with a little help, overcame their horrendous pasts will be featured this weekend in a special Animal Planet program that documents their journeys from frightened canines to forever companions.

The network partnered with the ASPCA to produce “Second Chance Dogs,” a behind-the-scenes look at the ASPCA’s Behavioral Rehabilitation Center at St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center in Madison, New Jersey.

The center works to rehabilitate dogs that have been removed from hoarding situations, puppy mills and other atrocious conditions.

“The animals have lived their lives in constant fear and neglect, resulting in extreme distrust of humans and at times complete catatonia,” according to an Animal Planet release. “These conditions make them unsuitable for adoption, and in some cases at risk to be euthanized.”

The program airs at 9 a.m. Saturday, April 16.

Launched in 2013, the ASPCA Behavioral Rehabilitation Center calls itself the first and only facility dedicated to rehabilitating dogs suffering from severe fear and undersocialization resulting from puppy mills, hoarding cases, and other situations that put them in peril.

“While we can’t yet answer all of the questions associated with rehabilitating at-risk animals, we continue to witness amazing transformations, dogs that conquer their anxiety and fear despite years of behavioral damage,” said Matthew Bershadker, president and CEO of the ASPCA. “These transformations change the trajectory of their lives.”

The ASPCA, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, plans to open a second rehab center next year in North Carolina, The new $9 million, 35,000-square-foot facility will be located at what used to be a cement plant in Weaverville, North Carolina, just north of Asheville.

In terms of its story line, White God isn’t too different from any other movie in which the bullied rise up and get even with the bullies.

What makes it different — and makes it shine — is that in this case the bullied are abused and mistreated dogs, a species that already knows (perhaps better and more instinctively than us) that there is strength in numbers.

Perhaps the most talked about scene in the much talked about Hungarian film — winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Prize Un Certain Regard Award and an official selection of Sundance Film Festival — is when a pack of 250 dogs, all mutts, stampede through the streets.

And what makes that scene even more impressive is that it was achieved not through computer graphics, but with dogs.

Director Kornel Mundruczo first issued a casting call for 100 dogs for the scene, then decided bigger would be better. More than 200 dogs ended up being involved, many of them from local animal shelters.

The scene serves as the movie’s climax, and it was a first of its kind achievement for the dog trainers involved.

Under the leadership of Hungarian dog trainer Árpád Halász, a team of humans was able to train the dogs to stampede in a pack in what was, in reality, a massive rush for treats.

One of the dog trainers involved, Teresa Ann Miller — daughter of a trainer who worked on films like Beethoven and Cujo — was interviewed about the movie on NPR this week.

Miller helped cast and train the two dogs who shared the role of Hagen.

The movie’s story begins when a young girl is forced to give up her dog, Hagen, because it is of mixed-breed heritage. Her father, unwilling to pay the fee required to keep a mutt, abandons Hagen in the streets.

Young Lili tries to find him, and Hagen tries to find her, but eventually he joins forces with, and becomes the leader of, hundreds of other abandoned, abused and mistreated dogs living in the streets.

As a pack, they rise up to seek revenge for the indignities they’ve suffered at the hands of humans.

(If the film has one fault, it’s the notion that dogs would seek revenge. They’re better than that.)

Miller told NPR that director Mundruczó wanted the stampede scene to look as real as possible — a goal complicated by the fact that no one has ever seen hundreds of domestic dogs running as a pack.

It was first rehearsed with 100 dogs running together.

Trainer Halász watched and then said, “What about 150?” Miller recounted. “And 150 looked so good that he says, What about 200? And each time Árpád learned, as he acquired the dogs and introduced other dogs into the pack, that it was possible.”

It took four months to prepare for the scene, she added.

“And that was amazing to see; that was fascinating. I’ve never seen it done. I’ve never seen such a large pack of dogs run together. And, quite honestly, I don’t think we’d ever do it here (in the U.S.) just for the time that it takes. It’s so much easier just to CGI it, but the director didn’t want that effect at all.”

A new documentary takes an inside look at the kind of “win-win-win” program I think should exist in every state, if not every prison.

“Dogs on the Inside” follows the relationships between abused stray dogs and inmates at a Massachusetts prison who are training and caring for them, getting them prepared to be put up for adoption.

Under a program called “Don’t Throw Us Away,” shelter and rescued dogs from the southeastern U.S. are sent to the North Central Correctional Institution at Gardner, where a group of inmate trainers work to regain their trust and, in the process, get some lessons in resilience and empathy.

The program benefits dogs and inmates. The third winner? Society — the one to which those inmates eventually are returning.

It’s similar to programs in other states we’ve written about before, including Philadelphia’s New Leash on Life, and, in North Carolina, a program with the same name, operated by the Forsyth County Humane Society.

Given we’re a country with more two million inmates incarcerated, given six to eight million dogs and cats enter shelters each year, and given most of both spend that time unloved and idle, getting them together — given the benefits that can follow — makes good sense

“Dogs on the Inside” follows the relationships between neglected and abused stray dogs and prison inmates in Gardner, Mass., as they “work together for a second chance at a better life: a forever home for the dogs and a positive life outside prison for the inmates.”

“Connected by their troubled pasts, the dogs learn to have faith in people again while the inmates are reminded of their own humanity and capacity for love and empathy,” the filmmakers say.

Directed by Brean Cunningham and Douglas Seirup, the film shows “the timeless connection between man and dog, showing the resiliency of a dogs’ trust and the generosity of the human spirit in the unlikeliest of places … In the seemingly dark recesses of a prison, a spark of light emerges that is a reminder of the wonderful and timeless connection that exists between dog and man.”

(Photos: Courtesy of “Dogs on the Inside”)