“The animal has only one family, you are his life”

Is it always during the summer that animals are the most abandoned?

Yes, unfortunately. Last summer, we collected in our shelters around 8,000 animals, in a context of drop in adoptions.

Your summer communication campaign against abandonment insists on the relationship between the animal and its master. Why this choice?

I never wanted us to do guilty and anxiety -provoking pathos. We highlight the reciprocal benefit of the link between man and animal. A pet improves physical health – you have to take out the walk – and psychic. It is an emotional sponge.

For example, we signed an agreement in 2023 with the Ministry of Justice to generalize legal assistance dogs. Their presence frees the words of the victims, especially that of young children. For me, taking care of animals is taking care of men.

How to explain the abandonment?

Often, we see the animal behind a window or during a puppy living room. We say to ourselves “Oh, how cute!” And finally, it costs too much, you don’t have time to get it out, you can’t go on vacation. We must educate the responsibility. The animal has only one family, you are his life.

To limit the irresponsible purchase, we ask for the extension of the animal protection law of 2021 to all domestic animals and all places of sale, such as the salons of the puppy or kitten. We want to prohibit sale by other people than breeders.

How did you get to the SPA?

By chance of things. It’s like surveys, when it wants, it wants.

I retired from the gendarme in 2018, at 60 years old. By conviction, I didn’t want to go to work for a multinational, but rather for an NGO. A friend introduced me to the SPA president. I became a director. A month later, the president resigned and I was elected.

Why did you choose this association?

I have always loved animals. I grew up in the countryside, in Cantal. At my grandparents, there were a lot of animals, especially dogs. Then I had three children, I returned to the gendarmerie, I no longer had time to have them.

When I was a magistrate for a year in Clermont-Ferrand in 1997, the first thing I did was to go to a refuge. I adopted a magnificent Braque de Auvergne, Enzo. He raised my children, this dog, he was great. I particularly like dogs, and their gaze that says to you: “Come on, we’re going to walk, go, we do something! »»

What made you most marked by arriving at the SPA?

The prison side of shelters. The dogs are behind gates, attached, they jump and bark 2.50 m from you. It doesn’t make you want to adopt at all. We are launching a new concept of shelters, with more spacious spaces, where we will come with the family, at school exit, not only to adopt but even to picnic or participate in a canine education course.

What did you learn?

I would not have imagined that the link between man and animal is so intimate. Canine educators know dogs very well. They taught me to understand their reactions, to communicate better with them.

One of your main missions is the fight against mistreatment. Do you understand it?

After seeing all the horrors that could be made to humans during my gendarme career in the judicial police, it was easier for me to understand those that could be inflicted on animals. Abuse are people who do not reflect, or who are immersed in misery. The animal becomes both the small radius of sunshine and the weak link in the hearth.

How do you fight these violence?

When I arrived, the intervention time after a report was 90 days. Now it’s 48 hours. We have refounded the reporting system and trained a police officer by police station and a gendarme by brigade.

But the cornerstone of our action is education. After thirty years of gendarmerie, I can say that the sorrows are only scary those who do not commit an offense. What works is what comes from inside of oneself. When we are sent an idea as soon as we are small, it becomes consubstantial. This is why we signed an agreement three years ago three years ago to intervene in schools.

Are you confident for the progress of the animal cause in France?

We are celebrating our 180th birthday this year. If it was so easy, we would not be there anymore. But I am more optimistic about animal abuse than human. There is a stabilization of the number of abandons and mistreatment in relation to the number of domestic animals. I tell myself that there has been a lot of progress since the time it was common to drown the rains of kittens that proliferated. People’s gaze changes.

In addition, the animal cause is the second favorite cause of the French*. For the moment, we receive enough donations. In the future, our biggest challenge is the extension of the refuges network.

Your best SPA memories?

Interventions in clandestine farms, because we save animals from mistreatment. In 2018, in Seine-et-Marne, we went to a small villa in which a family lived, 280 dogs and as many cats. When I went home, I felt like after certain scenes of PJ crimes. I put myself in pants on the landing and I took a shower.

Did your gendarme career serve you at the SPA?

There were big internal management problems in the association. On the day of my arrival, there was a search of the financial brigade. My past at the gendarmerie helped me put order. It was necessary to adopt inflexible driving rules, be more transparent in the use of donations. I am the first concerned, because the example must come from above, it is a military principle. In terms of structure, it was necessary to reorganize, create intermediate levels, appoint managers of interviews and surveys.

What link do you make between your old job and the spa?

It’s the same logic: trying to make the world a little better around you, protect. The relationship to work is also similar. In the police, when one is on a case of narcotics or child abuse, it does not matter that it is Friday 7 p.m. Friday. If the suspect leaves his hideout, we go. Like the spa, if a dog is sick, let’s go. And we come back the next day to check your temperature.

Isn’t the gendarmerie missing?

If investigation is very stimulating. We want to succeed, find, solve. At the SPA, there is no longer adrenaline, but there is the challenge. For me, it was to restore a professional and peaceful image of the association. (In 2018, she underwent control of the French anti-corruption agency for serious disabilities in donation management and the dilapidation of shelters, editor’s note)

You never get bored …

No. At the moment, in addition to the SPA, I am a magistrate at the national court of asylum law, I sit on the Economic and Social Council of Île-de-France, I am a consultant for BFM, I write scenarios, I restore 2 CVs, I have a small logging with my brother in Cantal. I have always slept very little. You have to get up early in the morning to save the world!

You have spent your life fighting suffering and violence. Did this have to question the sense of evil? On the existence of a transcendent being?

I don’t believe in God. For me, it is a creation of men to fight against death and anxiety. If God was love and all-powerful, why would he have created a steep man who kills, who rapes, who lies? In reality, I think that man is neither fundamentally good nor fundamentally bad. It is education that determines a large part of what it will be. I believe in the Social Republic, secular, which gives everyone according to their merits, educates and protects individual freedom.

* Image and notoriety barometer of associations and foundations using public generosity. Survey carried out in March 2024 by Ifop for France Générosités. The protection of animals is cited by 26 % of French people.