Claudio Pomo

On april 28 of 2012, at the end a march against Green Hill, a beagle breeder for the vivisection industry based in Montichiari (Italy), i jumped over a fence with razor wire and then another fence, to get inside one of the sheds. I opened the door and found myself in front of a long coridor full of dog cages on both sides, each one imprisoning a female with their puppies. I quickly went to the closest one on my right, and took two of the puppies in my hands.

Once outside i saw that one fellow activist had reached the second fence, the one closer to me, and opened a hole in it. I passed the two puppies and ran back inside the farm to take more. I did it three times, rescuing 6 small dogs from there, and would have taken more, but had to quickly jump in that hole in the fence when a policeman was running towards me and almost caught me by the foot.

We went outside the farm perimeter with the dogs. Thousands of people were close to the fence, cheering, and helped cover us fleeing away. We walked through fields, then over a small river, to get to a meeting place we had planned, where friends were waiting for us in their car on a country road of a nearby town.

The rest is history: after our rescue, many more activists stormed the place, and our action sparked the liberation of about 70 dogs - and the arrest of 12 people. Five of the six puppies i had rescued came with us to a safe home, and we shared their photos and videos online, and they immediately became famous, with their nice little faces all over Italian media. What happened that day was vital for legal proceedings that forced Green Hill to close down only three months later, leading to the rescue and rehoming of 2639 dogs.