We did great work that day. Such a productive day hadn’t happened for so long. I wrote and posted two blogs with affiliate links and photos with super speed and energy while my husband created a fantastic video for our wooden toys. We were both very happy about it and we wanted to reward ourselves by going out into nature to pick wild blackberries and clear our heads in the wonderful cool mountain air.
We were so happy in the mountain, we laughed and played and picked blackberries. Many of them ended up in our stomachs but we also saved some to make juice at home. It was becoming dark but we liked it there very much.
Strange Noise
All of a sudden, we heard some strange noise, and Nevena being Nevena thought that someone might need help, perhaps a dog. I made a few steps into the woods thinking that some hunter must have lost his dog on Sunday, the hunting day.
For the first time in my life, my husband sharply said to me to get back in the car. It was strange and I was annoyed with the sharp tone in his voice. He had never talked to me in that way! Soon I realized that it wasn’t a dog there but something else. Perhaps it was a jackal, as they say, there are a lot of jackals on that mountain. However, I didn’t see it but it was spooky.
Shivers went down my spine when I turned my back toward the woods and headed to the car. Nevertheless, I am sure they would feel my love for them and not hurt me. Anyway, I would be more scared if they told me I had an insect, especially a spider, on my back. I would run and scream until someone would be able to catch me and take the spider off.
So I got in the car, our son was very quiet and his eyes were wide open showing his fear. I made a joke that mum, being crazy as she was, wanted to take the jackal home. We laughed and made our way home.
On the Road
I was thinking about coming home, pretty tired, employing the last atoms of strength to climb up to the fourth floor in our building, which doesn’t have an elevator. I also thought about the juice I was planning to make from the blackberries we had just picked up. Hungry and thirsty but happy as the day went well we were heading home. The night fell, it was already pretty late.
Driving through the dark, something black jumped in front of the car and my husband stepped severely on the brake. I didn’t see what it was, but the crazy woman opened the door ready to jump out of the car and see what was going on. But instead of me getting out of the car, something jumped in the car, directly in my lap.
I was surprised and even stunned when it started licking my face. Not a jackal luckily, but a dog, a beautiful black and brown dog, a mix of the Balkan hound dog and I guess Rottweiler, was so happy to see us.
It was the dog we had seen two days before on the same spot. That day a tractor was passing by and we thought he was with the man on the tractor, as is the usual scenario here. No, he had spent two nights, that we know of, there at the same spot, perhaps listening to the song of the jackals and who knows what else. I can only imagine his fear when he had the guts to jump into the first car that stopped there.
My Plan?
Unwillingly, I must admit that I planned to get the dog to the city and leave him somewhere near my building where I could feed him every day. I have to make a little digression and explain my decision because I feel many of you got angry at this point in the story. Some may think that I am not a good person if I don’t do the full rescue.
However, one should know that I already have 18 dogs in boarding houses, so-called pensions. These are four people, four boarding house owners that I can rely on and leave a dog with. And they are already full, no more room for dogs.
Also, it is so difficult to collect the money to pay those pensions, food, veterinary treatments, vaccines, deworming tablets and anti-flea treatments and not to mention some unexpected health situations. I have always had trouble collecting money for all of them, but special troubles began with the world economic crisis. The donations are halved, I have lost several sponsors due to their reduced incomes and I am in huge trouble.
To continue the story, we came near our building, stopped and opened my door. He looked at the opened door, turned and proceeded to my husband’s lap. He didn’t want to come out of the car. So I took some food and somehow he went out. I put the anti-flea treatment on his back and returned to the car. He stood for a while and looked at us while we drove off.
My son was already crying in the back seat, but he is so small to understand the situation I am in with so many dogs. He said, “I feel so sad about the dog”. My heart was breaking. I could scream with the pain I felt for the dog and my son’s tears.
New Member
At that moment, I looked in the mirror and I saw the dog running like crazy after the car. Again, we stopped and the moment I opened the door he jumped in and started licking me like crazy! What happened next is my nightmare! Where to find him a safe place?!
I called the first boarding house, no response. Luckily the second one answered my call and after fifteen minutes of chatting about this, asking a thousand understandable questions, but at this point with big him in my lap, licking my face, I just wished for the final positive answer. And finally after such a long phone call, the eventual yes made me happy.
We went to the boarding house and were welcomed by a gang of beautiful dogs among which two were mine. One Malinois mix or pure Malinois, I am not sure, is young and pretty crazy, in the positive sense. She is very playful, adores people and loves jumping on them. The other is a rather small Balkan hound female that I found in the middle of the motorway totally emaciated and almost folded in half because of being so thin, however now well recovered.
They were both happy to see us and they were happy to accept the new friend. The other doggies are old, they were grumpy a little but not hostile. We spent some time there, my son was very tired and sleepy that Hannah, the Malinois, knocked him down when she jumped on him. And he is a shy child, never cries in front of anyone, always says that everything is all right. And when we are alone, he tells me stuff.
My View
On one hand, I can’t say that saving the dog ruined my day. Not at all, I am happy I could help him. But I wonder, what if I couldn’t help him. I would feel miserable! I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Then, other financial questions pop up and also the nightmare called adoption. My dogs wait for years before they finally get wonderful homes.
On the other hand, I wish I could have come straight back home after a tiring day and done the family stuff that normal people do, feed children, bathe them and put them to bed. On time, of course, that goes without saying. My son got home very late that night, and this is not the only time. He was given a fast and scarce dinner because we don’t eat late. Honestly, I wasn’t able to bathe him, just put him to bed.
I wish there weren’t so many similar cases not because of me, but because I don’t want anyone to suffer. Unfortunately, this is our everyday scenario. This doggie was left here by his owner for sure. And he was waiting for them to come back despite the jackals howling around him at night. He didn’t want to disappoint them and leave because he believed they would come back.
He believed…
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