Tomás Planells Struse is the son of a German woman and a farmer from San Miguel, who fought against cancer and won. And in the fight, a particular dog came to him. And nobody loves like dogs. No one is more faithful. No one so grateful.
At the same time, he began to see and worry about a relatively new problem that is advancing steadily; the invasion of snakes on our island due to imports of trees, especially olive trees for ornamental purposes, which has led to a building in the port for the quarantine of certain imports.
Actions are being carried out, for example, from trapping, creation of sanctuaries, development of ex situ breeding programs for the reintroduction (in Barcelona) to protect the podarcis pityusensis or pitiusa lizard, but it is not enough.but it is not enough.
And Thomas, with plenty of time on his hands, decided to use it for something good for the collective benefit.
-How did you and Boira meet?
-A girl gave it to me when she was two weeks old. We were bottle feeding her for a month and a half. At the beginning she was an earthquake of a bitch. It is known that many animals that when they are not raised with their mother, some wires get crossed, and they are either heavy or not very docile.
-What breed is it and how old is it?
-She is mixed, a vet told me she must be half German shepherd and border collie, that is daughter of working parents and mother, mainly goat and sheep handling. And she’s 2020, so she’s 5 years old.
-What is your personality like?
-She is very good, very active and good as a working dog but there are better ones. She has made things very easy for me, I have to say.
-Why Boira, does it have a meaning?
-Boira means fog in Ibicenco and because I liked it. Now she has more browns in her coat but before with the boira you couldn’t see her and I liked it.
-How do the invasive snakes arrive and where do they come from?
-In theory, because I have not seen it, inside the trees. In the olive trees for example, which have many hollows. They are brought in winter and it coincides with the hibernation of the snake. And when it is warm they come out, and since they have no predators, they reproduce without any problem.
-What is the biggest threat?
-For the lizards the first ones, I remember that before you would sit down to eat a sandwich anywhere and one would appear here and another one there… now they are nowhere to be seen. And you see snakes, which when you finish off the lizards will move on to the next species; rodents, small birds, and so on.
-There is a significant reduction then.
-Yes, yes, notorious. I don’t know numbers but I haven’t seen them for a long time and the last one I saw was in a shelter.
-How do you think of teaching your dog to hunt snakes one day?
-As it happened that I had a lot of free time and I read a news about a person who tried to teach a dog to catch snakes without success, I thought that I have more time than that man, for sure. And I tried. And I succeeded. After months.
-How?
-The first thing was to take away his fear. His survival instinct is to run but at the same time he also has a hunting instinct. The question is how do you remove one and not the other or both? Well, with a lot of patience. We spent months until she showed interest.
-What would happen if Boira is bitten by one of them?
-They have so little venom that they pose no danger to humans, dogs or anyone else. I have not been bitten but I would like to do the test, I am afraid, I also tell you. The dog was bitten but the vet told me that cleaning the wound to avoid infections is enough.
-But what exactly was the training like?
-At first we used the boxes that are scattered around the island that are traps, which have a mouse inside, and the snake enters but does not access the bait and cannot get out. I tried to present the snake alive to the dog, which was a total failure because she ran away crying. Then dead, which after death they still move reflexively but not so much, and there, with a prize, I presented it to her and it was better. “Come Boira”, “come Boira”, “come Boira”, “come Boira” without stopping and she tried to bite, and then more and more, until she understood that “that’s good”. Then when she saw me with just the box she was happy because she already had it associated with a prize.
-What is the reward?
-Ham, meat, bones…
-How did you understand from the boxes to look on the walls?.
-Well, that’s just me getting it wrong because I’m not a trainer but I watched a lot of tutorial videos and I realized that you have to give them an action word, which I hadn’t really done. A word that he immediately understands that he has to do something in particular. I now by touching the wall I tell him “fetch” and he does it, and if he finds, he marks.
-How do you mark, do you sit?
-No, she stares at first and then gets nervous, as if helpless because she knows there’s one on the wall but she can’t pick it up. I know immediately.
-What about snakes that you mark but cannot access?
That are registered for follow-up, at least you know that there is one or more in that area and come back to see if you are lucky next time, in addition to setting traps for example.
-And can you be called upon to take Boira to catch a snake?
-Well, some friends have, for example, the other day Eduardo Mayol from Botánico Biotecnológico called me and told me he had one located, but in the end there was no luck.
-Do you charge, do you think about training other dogs?
-No, because I am just starting and it is a benefit for the island and for everyone. If I were called 20 times a day and it took up a lot of my time, I would get paid.
-Tell us about your partnership with Bibopark and IbizaLoe.
-We recently got in touch and agreed to work together. Eduardo (Mayol) is interested in getting another dog to teach him and I am willing to help. And he is a person with very good ideas and resources so I think something good could be achieved.
-It would be great to have a 5 dog snake hunting team or something, wouldn’t it, is that your idea?
-More than that objective, we are more interested in creating more lizard shelters, but we have to get around a legislative issue that prohibits enclosing lizards, so it is a delicate issue. And if you leave them open, the risk is maximum. So Eduardo is putting a lot of work into this. He has his sanctuary and he puts raked sand around it so he knows when a snake enters… the dogs would be more of a control, I think…. But the more people that have trained dogs, the better. Especially since there are no natural predators in Ibiza.
-What eats snakes?
Short-toed eagles, ferrets, there are some.
-Of course, and if we put in ferrets we will have another problem because you are unbalancing the ecosystem….
-Exactly.
-Do you think this is fixable?
-No, I don’t think so. There are those, like Eduardo, who think so. Because of the nature of the snake, I don’t think so, because those bugs can stay between two rocks without moving and without eating for months. And then when they come out with their powerful sense of smell they detect the Co2 of any animal and start eating. They go on land, climb, swim… for not having limbs they are awesome! And on top of that, they are fast. And there are millions of ideal hiding places for them…
-And the island has an overpopulation of cats, I don’t think they would eat them but they could still kill them for playing, or am I making that up?
-Cats could kill them, but they also kill lizards, dragons and rodents. So I don’t think they would contribute to the solution.
-So this union of several people that has been born with the interest of fighting this plague is not for economic interests, I understand, but to take a step forward to solve or tackle this problem, do I understand correctly?.
-Yes, exactly. It is a failure of us, of the people, so it is our responsibility to fix it. I call and encourage everyone to have a trap, or a dog, or something to help control and eradicate snakes on the island.
