MISTREATED OR DEPRIVATION SYNDROME?
After rescuing over 20 years galgos, podencos and other Sighthounds in Spain, I came to the conclusion that most of them are not shy because of physical abuse.
Many will scream now WHAT???
Most of the Spanish hounds are shy or frightened because they have never been socialized and suffer from deprivation syndrome.
That means they have never met other people than their owner/hunter, they never ever were in a city, never saw screaming children or loud construction work, they have never seen any other dog breed because the galgueros don’t want them to learn other dogs behaviors and they don’t know how it is to live around humans as they were kept isolated.
All these things are soon normal for any dog when raised and socialized as a puppy but the Spanish hunting dogs are not that lucky.
Of course the galgos suffer lots of abuse and neglect but believe me, it’s easier to recover a terribly mistreated dog than one with deprivation syndrome because it’s easier to replace bad experiences with positive ones than filling in new experiences where there were no experiences at all. The imprinting during puppy age is what builds the character and personality of our dogs. By eliminating many normal experiences during the dogs childhood, his brain is later kind of blocked to store this basic information.
Imagine your dogs brain as a dresser with many drawers where information is stored during puppy age. The more stimulation they have, the more drawers are filled with experiences. But now imagine that the podenco or galgo has had only the kennel to hunting to back to kennel experience. So only a few drawers get filled with experiences, the other drawers stop working for not being used and it’s nearly impossible to reopen them. That’s why it is often so hard to make fearful hounds to become relaxed and happy.
PS: Nobody said that Galgos are not massively abused!
Depriviation is already a severe abuse because the result is lifelong problems. If you add beating, etc it becomes even worse
Depriviate any living being the contact to the outside is torture and unacceptable. But when people speak about abused Galgos, they imagine beaten or kicked dogs, and that is not at all always the case. Depriviation is more psychological and happens also to beloved pets that are never allowed to leave the house/yard. They start with behaviour disorders such as continuos barking, self inflicted injuries caused by stress, aggressiveness, etc
The depriviation syndrome is also often visible in dogs from puppymills. No need to be a hunting dog to suffer depriviation.
PS: Nobdy said that Galgos are not massively abused!
Depriviation is already a severe abuse because the result is lifelong problems. If you add beating, etc it becomes even worse
Depriviate any living being the contact to the outside is torture and unacceptable. But when people speak about abused Galgos, they imagine beaten or kicked dogs, and that is not at all always the case. Depriviation is more psychological and happens also to beloved pets that are never allowed to leave the house/yard. They start with behaviour disorders such as continuos barking, self inflicted injuries caused by stress, aggressiveness, etc
The depriviation syndrome is also often visible in dogs from puppymills. No need to be a hunting dog to suffer depriviation.
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