The family of Bartomeu Marí Sendic has contacted Periódico de Ibiza y Formentera to assure that none of the offspring of the dogs owned by their late father are responsible for the recent attacks on other domestic animals in the municipality of Sant Josep, as has been reported in recent days ‘without any evidence’.
Sendic’s daughter, Teresa, claims that it is all ‘slander’ since her father died in 2017 and his hounds had been taken away from him years earlier. «We only kept one dog for my mother and sister, and that animal was neutered. Without knowing anything, rumours began to spread in the area that many chickens had gone missing and that it had all been caused by my father’s dogs’ descendants, but they are tarnishing his memory and we find it very distasteful,« Teresa laments.
She believes that if the person who made the anonymous complaint had visited her farm, they would have seen that there is only one old dog that never leaves the house, meaning they cannot be blamed for what has happened in recent weeks.
«It’s true that my father was a hunter and was very fond of the hounds, which he liked to keep free. He built a pen for them, but one of them always stayed outside and escaped. If one of his dogs ever killed a chicken, my father would pay for it afterwards. It didn’t happen very often, but people would see the dogs running loose and quickly complain,» Teresa explains.
She regrets how many neighbours are talking ‘angrily’ about these dogs and her family on social media, and she is asking for all this to stop. ‘We don’t want to report anyone, but we are asking for this to end,’ she insists.
Teresa also comments on how other neighbours have publicly denied that the dogs that attacked in recent weeks were podencos, saying instead that they were of a bulldog-type breed.