Paula the dog who wouldn't bark

Harry, who you all know or will get to know over the course of this blog, and I have been thinking about getting a dog for a long time. We didn't because living in Hannover, in a 5th floor apartment is just not a nice place for a dog. Too many stairs and not enough green space. One of the reasons we decided to move to Spain was to be able to live in a house with a dog perhaps as a practice for the eventuality of children. If we don't kill the dog, maybe then we will be able to handle babies.

Once we settled in to Ximena, we set off to the animal shelter in La Linea to get ourselves a dog. The animal shelter is unbelievable. It is built for 150 dogs and holds well over 400. The founder, a Dutch man name Peter, funds the entire thing himself with a charity he also created in Holland. The state doesn't help him at all even though he saves the state thousands of dollars a year. La Linea has a state run animal shelter, which Peter calls the Killing Station, because every week the euthanize all of the animals that have been brought there and were not picked up after 7 days. Rather than let that happen, Peter and his volunteers run over there and grab all the animals and take them to their shelter across the road. Peter lives and breathes for the animals there, he is an amazing man to talk to, his passion runs so deep h has dedicated his entire life to these animals. The Spanish are not good pet owners, nor are the expatriates who come here with good intentions, buying dogs for their new lives in Spain and then realising they have to leave and are unable to take the pet with them. After summer vacation, Peter's place fills up with summer pets that are either not cute enough anymore, or inconvenient, or too expensive to ship. In the summer the place is filled with dogs that people do not want to take care of while they go on summer vacation with the family. Pets are disposable. It is sad, truly sad, Peter's place looks more like a concentration camp for animals than a shelter. He does the best he can, and no dog is turned away, the kennels are made with anything and everything he can find, broken palates, chicken wire, garbage lumber from all over. Most of the floors are dirt, and there is generally only one area of shelter in each kennel, so when it starts to rain, all of the animals run for their dry corner. When Harry and I visited it was hard to leave with only one dog, we wanted to take them all.

But we did leave with one. Paula, she picked Harry. We went into her kennel and she jumped up tail wagging, eyes huge and pawed his jeans with her dusty feet. She is a typical "Parkplatz hund", no fine genetic heritage. The place was full or amazing purebred dogs that must have been bought for hundreds of dollars, German Sheppards, Scottish Terriers, even a Dalmatian puppy. But Paula is like us, common. She didn't bark, didn't say a word, but her eyes implored us to get her out of this place. She is a generally shy and nervous dog and I think living in the kennel with 9 other dogs was too much for her, she is also covered in battle scars, bits of hair missing from her ears.

Paula was brought from the killing station more than 2 years ago, as a puppy, someone took the time to buy her, have an electronic tag put in her ear and then dumped her when she was 6 months old, no more cute, but a gangly teenage dog. She spent the rest of her life in a cage with a dirt floor.

So we packed her off in our car, as quick as we could, but shes not a fan of cars, she vomited the entire drive home. Then she sat on the sofa for three days and would not get off, not to eat, not to play, not for anything. Clearly depressed and finding her new people friends a bit overwhelming. Being that she was unhappy we did the best we could to make her feel at home. Harry built her a dog house out of an old door we found in the backyard, she now has a pretty posh place of her own. She slowly came round, started to eat, started to get off the couch and explore the house. She was scared to enter any room of the house alone, and would only go if we took her. But now she moves around freely, and she is developing quite a strut. Initially when we dragged her outside she hid behind us, and ran away from everything with her tail between her legs. Now, a week later, she ambles through the neighbourhood, tail held high and she sometimes even barks. A confident, this is my place bark.

It is amazing to see her turn around, from this cowering tick ridden little thing, to a strong confident dog. I can not believe Harry and I are so proud of this little dog,, imagine how we will feel when our fist child graduates from school!