In our family there has always been dogs and cats, dogs of all sizes and ages, crossed breeds and dogs with pedigree, since the abandonment of our most faithful friends has nothing to do with pedigree.

We’ve always taught our kids to love and respect animals, since when my oldest son was 4 years old and our daughter 10 months old they could caress, play and share food for the first time with our first dog, a female named Layca. She was a beautiful crossed bred (of we don’t know what), awake, intelligent, good, with big ears and especially very good with “her kids”.

Our family, existing out of Luis, my husband, and our kids, Luis, Virginia and Rogrigo, now adults, we’ve been living with our faithful friends for 30 years. Yes, 30 years of joys and also of plenty of sufferings when these noble partners get old and sick, and the time comes to take such a painful decision for all the family, which is say good bye to them, who will start their final road alone, leaving us each time with a big emptiness in our hearts. We compensate this knowing that they have been loved by all the members of the family, for the only thing we do is give our faithful friends what they give to us, even when at first they don’t know us.

Yes, because these human beings, who seem to be the same as others, who feed them and “take care” of them for years, decide one day that these wonderful partners, who’ve been with them for more or less time have become a nuisance and decide to become GODS to play with their lives. In the best of cases they will abandon them in shelters, who are full with so many abandonments. And then there are those other inhuman, who leave them in the roads. They know perfectly well that these magnificent animals will wait for hours the return of whom till then had been their masters. These poor animals will wander for days the countryside, in towns, suffering thirst, hunger and sadness, not being able to understand the cause of their situation and helplessness (since human animals are supposed to be rational). And so it is for days, till one day, crossing a road a car will knock them down, killing him in the best of cases, and in the worst leaving them dying for days in the gutter, since many drivers aren’t able to kneel down and see if the animal needs vet assistance or if he simply needs to be taken to the vet to end with his suffering.

Going back to what I had started some lines before, I was commenting you that these abandoned dogs are capable of trusting these strange people, who stop their car at the side of the road, near them and try to calm them down, they try for them to get closer, that they let themselves caress, and “understand” that that person offers them their naked and clean hands, with nothing that can scare them and tells them: come close, I won’t hurt you, let us help you, smell me, for I won’t push you aside no matter how big you are, I won’t get scared even if you grunt at me and show me your powerful teeth, I know you don’t want to bite me, I know you are very scared, that you’ve been days without eating, drinking, I know your nights are endless and cold, that you miss some hands who caress you, and above all I know you have plenty of love even with all your misfortune, love that in our family we’ll know how to return it to you.

Even when they are scared, and many time they’ve been mistreated, you still have the capacity to give. For all this, when the dogs that we’ve picked up on the roads, decide to jump into our car, trusting once more in human beings, we feel that in no way we can fail them, for they are giving human race another chance.