Happy endings

Hecabe was in the most horrible cage of all in the public pound of Sparta . All we first saw was a black, feral dog with mange. That's what we knew about her, until we found out she's ten years old.

Ten years old means that a dog is elderly, that it does not have the same endurance, that it has more needs, that it needs more care and that it deserves more respect. Who knows her past, where she came from, how she ended up there, what she remembers and what she doesn't. For a ten-year-old dog, living in this way acquires an even more tragic dimension.

This dog looks like a heroine of an ancient Greek tragedy. At first she didn't approach us at all and as we looked at her from a distance, her tragedy seemed in all its glory, without anything being able to hide her.

She has now begun to open up, to approach, to take treats from our hand, and she also enjoys the caresses of people she knows well. She has a sweetness in her gaze and a gentleness in her ways, which makes you want to spend time with her, makes you want to help her understand what she has already begun to suspect. That people are good, that life is beautiful, and that love deserves her trust. 

We had seen Nikos at the public pound of Sparta, outside the barbed wire. He was tied up in the distance, and from afar he looked dead.

Of the 44 dogs we got from there by prosecutor's order, Nick looked the sickest. However, all his tests showed nothing, apart from a dog that had been left to die of simple starvation. He arrived one step before death literally, but began to recover and from day one he had an appetite for food.

He has gained back his strength, but he remains skinny. He is a large, imposing dog, that deserves only respect, and his recovery is a huge relief for us. He is currently only available for virtual adoption only.

She was in the public pound of Sparta in a box. The dog was inside a box. Looking from outside, we thought the box was empty, and at some point a white head moved from the inside.

Entering in the next day, we found her like that, half inside half out. She had eaten the wires and had taken out her head in order to breathe. Opening the door of the box from the front we found that its length was half what it looked like. The box was split in two, essentially two boxes into one, and Padnora was crammed into one of them.

The scariest thing wasn't even that. Opening it, we found out that she has been there locked up for days, weeks even. Locked tightly, inside her toilet essentially, and we don't want to describe in more detail. you get the point

She runs free now and can't get enough of her freedom. Ιt's pretty obvious why we named her Pandora. She is a very social asn sweet dog, that loves life and is willing to learn and to collaborate with humans. When she is totally relaxed, she lays down and shows you her belly and lets you pet her for hours. 

VIDEO

Eliana is the happiest, the most easy-going, the most loving dog in the whole world.

Even if she carries on her back a diificult life, coming from the public pound of Sparta 

Eliana loves the whole world. Even when she has her friends around her, she always prefers to be next to a human and be petted.

VIDEO of her story

"The grandmother with the string around her neck", that's what we called her in the beginning. For a while, each of us referred to her by different names each, until we ended up in Vaya (meaning wet nurse in Greek).

She is elderly. So old that her muzzle is whitewashed, and she was in a cage in the public pound of Sparta with at least 11 puppies. We found her in a small house, trying to protect herself. And at this age, she probably didn't know what to protect ehrself from. From the filth? from panic? from the hustle and bustle?

Imagine how much fuss, how much constant noise eleven puppies make in a cage, and imagine how intolerable this is for an elderly dog, who on top of that is also starved for who knows how many days.

Sarah is one of those dogs that have a calmness and a stoicism.

Maybe it's age, maybe it's just her character. She looks gorgeous when we look at her like that from afar, it almost makes you think that now that she is old she is more beautiful than she was in her youth.

She is currenlty available for virtual adoption only.

This little girl there in the public pound of Sparta, along with the rest of the dogs that roamed freely in the front. She was emaciated, with dermatological problems, sad and quiet, but there.

At every moment, as we were looking from outside, and when we walked in, she was there. She was looking at the people taking the other dogs from the cages, at the volunteers who were cleaning up, at the people transporting the dogs outside. As if she was trying to participate without annoying us, just being present, trying to understand what was going on. She was so present that we have her in countless photos and countless videos from that day. We had already picked up most of the dogs when in the end we got her too.

She was one of the last dogs to come out of there that day, she saw the space she knew changing around her in a few hours, and sometimes we wonder what she was thinking as she watched us come and go, before she realized that she would not just be a spectator, but she would also leave with the others.

The thing with Mellie is not that she has recovered, that she has gained weight and that she has become beautiful. It is that she is the sweetest, most easy-going and tender creature in the world, and Mellie, which means honey in Greek, is the most fitting name for her. She has a kindness and a sweetness in her ways, which are rare, and she is an easy easy. Easy to love, easy to be around, easy to communicate and live with. 

VIDEO of her story