The Animal Welfare Awards are an initiative created by the Official College of Veterinarians of Madrid (COVM) to recognize the good work of people, institutions, brands and even animals in favor of the welfare and protection of animals.
But it is not a prize that just anyone wins, but entities and beings (rational and irrational) that carry out relevant actions in our society.
Today the third edition of these awards was held in a ceremony led by the president of COVM, Felipe Vilas, who highlighted that animals “in most cases, not only offer company and support to people, but are also a more member of the family ”. The winners on this day have been:
This furry little girl is a medical alert specialist revealing sugar imbalances in patients with diabetes. It is one of the 80 dogs trained by the Canem de Zaragoza Foundation that already lives with a family in Spain to warn in advance of possible episodes of hypo or hyperglycemia in the daughter of the family. She was the first dog in Spain to detect both rises and falls in sugar.
Dogs trained for this work with smell. Thus, they discover the isoprene variations that occur in diabetes or epilepsy.
To warn their owners they use a characteristic bark, different from the rest of the vocalizations it emits.
Specifically, Cini has saved the life of her owner, Lidia, a 19-year-old girl who has had type 1 diabetes since she was little. The young woman says that she is “her guardian angel.”
This association has been awarded in the category of ‘Institution committed to animal welfare’ for having spent 36 years recovering wild fauna. They have the largest Wildlife Hospital in Europe where they have been able to treat more than 40,000 animals. The animals arrive with intoxications, poisons, abuses, traps, looting, malnutrition or environmental transformations. Once the animals are discharged, they are released into their natural habitat. However, some of them remain in the environmental education center so that citizens can learn about these species and learn to protect and conserve them.
The award comes to reward the contribution they make to the recovery and rehabilitation of fauna , the captive breeding of endangered species, the conservation of natural spaces and environmental education and awareness.
Rebeca Atencia, director of the Jane Goodall Institute of Congo , has received the award for “Committed Person” for managing one of the world’s leading centers for the recovery of primates, whose main mission is the rescue of chimpanzees orphaned as a result of poaching In this place, with the help of psychologists, we study where each of the collected apes will live: in controlled facilities equipped for them or if it is more convenient for them to return to the open forest. ‘ as veterinarians, we are responsible for ensuring the appropriate degree of well-being for animals because we are trained for it ‘, Atencia commented yesterday in a talk at COVM.
This year there has been one more award, the “Special” for its commitment to animal welfare, which has been received by American society as a whole for its joint work in the disasters of Hurricane Harvey , where not only humans suffered but also the most of a thousand pets and numerous production animals, such as cows and horses. These had to be rescued from the floods and handed over to their owners. As early as 2006, after Hurricane Katrina, the United States Congress passed the Pet Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act (PETS), which requires states requesting help to incorporate evacuation plans for pets. in emergency situations.
This law, plus the action taken by the US population regarding animals in the 2017 disaster, has left latent the commitment of North Americans to animal protection. For this reason, the COVM has seen fit to grant this special award that until now had not been awarded in previous editions.
