The false sense of security

The shelter is a safe harbor in the tormented lives of stray dogs. Some of them experienced such hunger or sickness or physical trauma, one wonders how they had survived so far, so the shelter seems to be the right answer, the ONLY answer for such abused animals. Everyone breaths easy when the answer to their febrile question “is this dog safe???” comes into the form of  “yes, he or she is safe in the shelter”. 

It is rather easy to build a shelter in Romania. One might do it in their back yards and have a very special relationship with their neighbors, or find a piece of land and start building kennel after kennel, depending on funds and what scraps they can find. Oddly enough, the kennels become full even before they get built and as it happens, one can easily go from 20 to 100 dogs over night. Because once there is the notion of “shelter”, filling it to the maximum  and beyond comes natural. People you know or those who have never spoken to you before offer their help into signaling the places in town where it is absolutely MANDATORY FOR STRAY DOGS TO BE TAKEN AWAY. Which usually happens to be all over town and the surrounding villages, woods, fields and so on.

Once one decides to start building a shelter they will find that there are dozens of animals lovers in town willing to help fill the kennels. Most of them promise to come visit their dogs, no help or donations needed between animals lovers, after all, they share the same cause and it would be offensive to measure such precious relationship in, say, dog food. But then the visits stop and they hardly ever admit they have dogs sitting around for years in kennels. 

There is also the problem of whether the shelter is a proper home for these animals. The shelter isn’t meant to be a permanent home in the first place, but who can guarantee that once taken from the streets the dogs will find good homes? Some are so mentally traumatized that staying in a noisy shelter, locked up in a small kennel is the worst thing that could happen to them. But mental health over a bowl of food everyday is an easy matter to solve. Dogs have no need for mental health once they are safe in a shelter!

Dogs have proven to be social animals who need companionship – their main purpose nowadays is exactly that, keeping company to people who find them pleasant to have around. They need mental stimulation, they need exercise, they need to please their master, to bring them their slippers in the evening and paper in the morning. Dogs need to belong to someone. 

I help run a small dog shelter in Romania and we had this dog named Dexter. He was rescued from the streets with his mother 5 years ago, when the dogcatchers killed a lot of stray dogs in our town. He was just a skinny puppy and he spent all his childhood behind bars. His notion of life was “I have food every day, mostly the same food, few toys or treats; I am dry and somewhat warm in the winter, they bring me straw. I feel like playing, but there’s never enough time for that. I want to lick someone’s hand, but all the hands around me are always so busy to keep me fed and dry, there’s no time for licking…I am alone!”

Dexter was a dog whom we thought had mental issues because of being locked for so long. But luckily he was adopted and soon after that, his owners had to leave for a few days and left him with a nanny. They filmed when they got back and it was so amazing to see Dexter so happy to see the ones he had dreamed about being “his people”. He finally had a family he was happy to see again, he finally BELONGED to someone. It was priceless to watch. 

Dexter in his new home

For the past 13 years of volunteering in Romania, building a shelter, rescuing dogs from the streets, working alongside medical teams who did free spay/neuter projects throughout Romania, I was always heartbroken over how lonely these loving animals are. Beyond suffering of hunger, cold, disease, neglect, abuse, dogs suffer from loneliness and my belief is that this is the biggest tragedy of their life. They are animals designed for loving us, but we repeatedly deny their life meaning and cast them away. 

I am confident that this tragedy can be stopped only by spaying more dogs, so they are not born unwanted and doomed to isolation and death. 

Building more shelters in Romania is not the answer, SPAY and NEUTER is!

Please support Romania Animal Rescue in their struggle to end animal's suffering by doing more free spay/neuter projects in Romania!

PayPal : donations@romaniaanimalrescue.org

When your best friend becomes your worst enemy

I started looking up the meaning of “best friend” mainly because we live in an era where nobody seems to remember the meaning of it anymore. Nowadays, people are more interested in sharing their lives, their success, their most inner fears or sorrow with total strangers on social media, but find themselves incapable of sharing a single honest moment with another person who is actually in their lives. I don’t know about you, but I feel more and more alone in this world where people are no longer willing to communicate at a personal level, instead they choose to hide behind a screen and act human, when in fact, they are becoming more and more like robots.

            Being aware of this worrying fact I recently found myself tempted to let my guard down and open up to someone I just met, in a sad attempt of finding new real friends, maybe even best friends; how sad that we have to let our guard down to make friends...I thought that being honest, helpful, truthful and warm would insure the success of a friendship, but little did I know, the world doesn’t need bff’s anymore (best friends forever).  I am writing this story with a mixture of sadness and amusement towards my own person for being so gullible and so eager to share things that make me who I am with a person who sadly has proven to be arrogant, deceitful, selfish and immature. Besides the disappointment, I am saddened to see that people don’t know how to be best friends for each other anymore and even acting it seems impossible for most.

            So, here are a few definitions I found online for the meaning of “best friends”:

“An especially close and trusted friend”, as opposed to “worst enemy”.

“Someone who never gives up on you, someone who won't let you down, someone who listens to you”.

“One's closest and dearest friend”.

“Someone who forgives you”.

“Someone who accepts you for who you are, your perfections and imperfections”.

Thinking about my personal experience and reading these few sentences that highlight one of the most wonderful human interaction, I can’t help but conclude that while very few people have it in themselves to be someone’s best friend, dogs are especially created for the job. Comparing the situation mentioned above with the experience I’ve had with dogs over the years, I have to ask myself, when did a dog lick my hand, but bit me from behind as soon as I turned around? When did a dog acted happy to see me, but then first time I needed help they just left me there? And finally, when do dogs ever make us feel stupid, redundant and small? The answer is a simple one: never.

            Looking up on the internet about why dogs have been tamed, I found an article written by Professor Robert Wayne from University of California, saying that the taming of dogs started almost 20 000 years ago when wolves were getting closer to people (because of the animal carcasses left behind) and ended up “staying and evolving together”. So, from early ages, the man and the “dog” became very close and, weather for specific means such as keeping guard or hunting, or for companionship, they stayed together.  I could go on talking about their loyalty and pure hearts, but these things have been very much discussed over time and it is a known fact that the dog is a man’s best friend; that is not the issue.  But when did man stop being the same for dogs? Best friends, as few as they are nowadays are called that way because they are there when we need them, they listen and don’t judge, they forgive us no matter what. Wouldn’t it be absolutely shocking if your best friend would, all of a sudden, not only betray you, but send you to death or condemn you to a life of decay and torture? Isn’t that concept simply insane?

            Further more, I ask you to please try and answer these simple questions:

Would your best friend make you feel invisible and unheard?

 

 Would your best friend leave you for dead in the middle of nowhere with no means of survival?

 Would your best friend cast you into a world that is meant to sacrifice you because it has no use for you?

Would your best friend forget all about you and left you alone?

Would your best friend hurt you in a way that left you broken inside and out?

Would you best friend leave you hopeless without the strength of ever believing again?

Now ask yourself this: would your worst enemy do all that to you?

When did people lost their ability to love unconditionally and stop being worthy of such love? And is this new world we are trying so hard to create worth sacrificing such values as empathy, compassion, selflessness, honesty, values that seem the very essence of what makes us human? What have dogs done to us that is so wrong as to forget they were created to be our bffs (best friends forever)? The answer is a simple one: nothing. The saddest part is, dogs will always be our best friends, no matter how much we cast them aside; they will trust those who betray them, they will lick the hand of that who has hurt them and they will stay by our side when the whole world has turned its back on us, because that is the true meaning of being one’s “best friend”.

            The message of this article should be a reminder of what can make us happy and where to find the truest best friends we will ever going to have, but also a call for help to put a stop to this infamous betrayal. Please help our best friends by saving them of being born into a world that has no regard for them and has become their enemy!

Choose to be part of the solution, support free spay/neuter projects throughout Romania by donating to Romania Animal Rescue using these details:

                                USA paypal : romaniadogs@sbcglobal.net;

                                UK paypal: donations@animalsni.uk

Please check out our website: http://www.romaniaanimalrescue.org/

            Thank you!