Over 30 arrested in southern Spain in animal cruelty case

The Spanish Civil Guard announced on Tuesday it had arrested 26 hunters and six veterinarians for mutilating hundreds of hunting dogs in the province of Huelva in the southwest of Spain.

The dogs had their tails and ears cut off without any anesthetic, in many cases leaving open wounds which would take weeks and months to heal.

This was done in order to save the hunters from having to pay a vet's fee of around 40 euros (44 U.S. dollars) for performing the operations correctly on each animal.

The vets were detained for providing fake certificates in an attempt to cover up the procedure and the Civil Guard expect the number of arrests to increase in the coming days.

"Operation Ears" began around a year ago.

Cutting the ears and tails of dogs was legal in the Community of Andalusia until 2003 when a new law established that mutilation for "purely esthetic reasons or without use unless carried out by a veterinarian" was against animal rights.

But hunters maintain cutting ears and tails is a tradition which helps dogs run though undergrowth when chasing prey.

Meanwhile, the Andalusia prosecutors office told El Pais newspaper that the action was "cruelty without anesthesia, just to save themselves the vet fee," and that the dog owners knew the suffering it caused. Endit