Of Birds and Dying Dogs
I have been a bit quiet lately to say the least, PLB is well and truly on the move and investigating everything he can possibly reach and the computer, iron, kitchen drawers etc. are amongst the things he can reach so I spend a LOT of time re-directing his attention and therefore I avoid spending time online while he is awake anyway I will snatch 5 minutes now while I should be getting to bed instead.
While we were in the south of Italy in June I noticed that peoples attitudes regarding animals is very, shall we say "relaxed"? Their dogs ride on their scooters unrestrained rather like their children in the back of the car (that is a whole different post). One thing that I found disturbing was walking (most days) past a pet shop where the display outside is a (too small) cage with 6 old parakeets - you could see that the birds were not well looked after and I wondered if people would ever buy a pet from a shop like that.
One morning we were on our way to the beach when we saw a dog lying on the pavement ahead of us. The dog was moving around slightly but you could see from a distance that all was not well. As we came closer we could see that the poor thing was emaciated and in very poor health to say that it was close to death is not an exaggeration. We stood for some time trying to work out what to do (we weren't keen on touching it as it might have rabies or something), we decided to go into the holiday village that we were just passing to ask if the people in reception could find us the number for the Italian equivalent of the RSPCA. Obviously we wouldn't be able to care for the dog as we didn't live there. As we were still pondering all these things the dog wandered further away and lay down in the middle of the road. We started to get even more nervous for the poor dog a couple of cars drove around the dog and some more passers-by stopped to look, then finally an Italian couple who had just come out of the afore mentioned holiday village picked the dog up and started back to the village. We exchanged a few words and they said that they would see to the care of the dog. The poor little dog lay resting it's head on the man's arm, it seemed to know that it was going to be cared for now. We were so happy for the little dog, which by the way was extremely cute - like something you would see on a calendar.
While we were in the south of Italy in June I noticed that peoples attitudes regarding animals is very, shall we say "relaxed"? Their dogs ride on their scooters unrestrained rather like their children in the back of the car (that is a whole different post). One thing that I found disturbing was walking (most days) past a pet shop where the display outside is a (too small) cage with 6 old parakeets - you could see that the birds were not well looked after and I wondered if people would ever buy a pet from a shop like that.
One morning we were on our way to the beach when we saw a dog lying on the pavement ahead of us. The dog was moving around slightly but you could see from a distance that all was not well. As we came closer we could see that the poor thing was emaciated and in very poor health to say that it was close to death is not an exaggeration. We stood for some time trying to work out what to do (we weren't keen on touching it as it might have rabies or something), we decided to go into the holiday village that we were just passing to ask if the people in reception could find us the number for the Italian equivalent of the RSPCA. Obviously we wouldn't be able to care for the dog as we didn't live there. As we were still pondering all these things the dog wandered further away and lay down in the middle of the road. We started to get even more nervous for the poor dog a couple of cars drove around the dog and some more passers-by stopped to look, then finally an Italian couple who had just come out of the afore mentioned holiday village picked the dog up and started back to the village. We exchanged a few words and they said that they would see to the care of the dog. The poor little dog lay resting it's head on the man's arm, it seemed to know that it was going to be cared for now. We were so happy for the little dog, which by the way was extremely cute - like something you would see on a calendar.
posted by Lillian the Ponderer at 22:02
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