The mystery of the poisoned dogs grips the upper part of the Río Verde; namely, Jete and Otívar! By the end of November past, over 20 pets had met their untimely end, thanks to poisoned bait. And we’re not talking about poison being put down in the plantations, but even within the streets of the village.

The owner of one canine victim, Manuel García Sánchez said, “Chispa (his pet Chihuahua) was seen eating something in Calle Cuevas and the next moment he was a stiff!” Chispa was a village celebrity, as he was often seen riding on the back of his master’s mule.

Now, anybody whose been out here a couple of decades will remember that there were certain times of the year when you kept a close eye on your mutt, if you lived in the campo, because farmers were always putting down poisoned bait. But this is different, because somebody with an evident dislike of dogs in the village is placing his arsenal in the very centre of the village, which is just not cricket.

Manolo Novo is convinced that the poison being used is WMD because the dogs die within moments – consequently he doesn’t let his cherished Cuqui and Nani past the front door.
“One English woman, who often walked five dogs together, has only got two left,” he muttered.

Yet nobody is denouncing these deaths to the Guardia Civil, who are desperate to have somebody make an official complaint so that they can investigate. Well, that’s not 100% true as Manuel Bustos took his dog off down to a vet in Almuñécar, but nothing could be done for it. At present, the corpse is in deep freeze, waiting for Seprona to carry out an autopsy. Yet one person in a village of over a thousand where 20 pets have given up the ghost is hardly an angry avalanche of denuncias, as you would expect.

Antonio Pontes, who runs Clínica Pontes, and who advertises with us, has been treating cases of poising from up the valley for years and knows that such cases always increase in Autumn and Spring, yet this year he is as surprised as everybody else to see that dogs are being poisoned in the village streets, where such baits are a mortal trap for inquisitive children.