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The Spanish people use greyhounds to a large extent in the hunting season in their country. They call the dogs Galgos in their language and the dogs possess a great hunting skill and the instinct to work as hunting dogs. Nevertheless, there is another issue concerning the use of greyhounds in the country that has gotten the interest of animal rights groups and other international organizations.

The hunters in Spain have traditionally killed their hunting dogs when the hunting season ends in January. They do this to get rid of the dogs because they have no intention of keeping them as pets until the start of the following hunting season. Due to this practice, the numbers of greyhound carcasses that litter the Spanish countryside are many at the climax of the hunting season.

People do not know how this practice started though they know that the noble people of old publicly displayed tortured greyhounds to frighten the people who owned or rented small pieces of land from taking part in protests. They actually tortured many of these dogs rather than allowing them to die fast.

The hunters deliberately tie the noose in such a manner that the dogs can hold themselves up on their hind legs for a couple of days. Once they start to weaken from hunger and thirst they lose the power to hold themselves up and fall into the noose thereby suffocating to death.

Although the practice of killing greyhounds has gone on for many centuries, it has gotten the attention of the public only a few years ago. The people of Spain are infamous for their cruel handling of bulls in their traditional bullfighting sport but this barbaric tradition of slaughtering greyhounds appears to be a rival or something that exceeds the very unpleasant tradition in cruelty too.

Some people think about the practice that Spanish use the greyhounds and then kill them very brutal. Other people consider the way of killing the greyhounds as something disturbing. The estimated number of greyhounds hanged in this way each year is ten thousand and above.

There are other methods that the Spanish hunters use to kill the greyhounds in Spain. Among these methods is throwing them into abandoned wells. One other way is to let them die from starvation by leaving them as wanderers in the woods. It is possible to find burnt greyhound carcasses in the countryside.

Spain has a lot of people engaging in hunting and farming as their main method of getting food. These people exceed thirty million and most of them utilize the greyhound for hunting.

The argument of these farmers is that they lack the necessary facilities which will enable them to give the greyhounds adequate food and housing for the entire year and they therefore resolve to kill the greyhounds at the end of the hunting season. The main concern is therefore the way they kill the dogs and not the reason why they kill them.