The very alternative Boom Festival, Portugal (this year being held August 11th-18th), has issued a press release reminding that pets in general and dogs in particular are not allowed. The reasons run from the obvious (to everyone except a particularly obtuse kind of dog lover) - that it would be unkind to the animals to subject them to days of intensive, loud music, that they are likely to suffer dehydration and heat stroke, they are unhygienic, they are likely to stress out and fight and/or bite people - to the fact that the festival location is within a leishmaniasis zone. This was something I had only been dimly aware of before, not being a pet owner, so I checked: most of the Mediterranean, including southern Portugal and Spain, is considered a canine leishmaniasis zone (humans are not affected here, thank goodness), and it is thought that a dog has a 30-35% chance of contracting the disease. Read on for more about the Boom Festival and leishmaniasis here.

Posted by : John Ross on Monday, March 03, 2008 - 09:50 AM 619 reads