Some days are better than others, right? For us humans, a bad day is when things don’t work out as we had planned them, when the weather makes us depressed, when we don’t get the expected result. But, dogs… do dogs have bad days? They do, just like humans, but of course for different reasons. In a dog’s life, the worst day, however, is really something else… That day when man’s best friend gets to understand he will never go home again. That day is the worst possible in a dog’ life. A dog’s worst nightmare.
The door opens and closes so many times. Just as many times, people come in, people go out that same door, all very busy. From time to time, one of those people stops by the cage to check if there is enough water or to put food down, or to change the bedding. He’s alone in the cage and he is safe. Why doesn’t it feel like it though? He is restless and can’t settle down no matter what happens. He keeps looking at the door, tail wagging every time it opens and someone comes in. They’re here now, they have come to take him home. This was all just a moment where he had to stay without them. All is good now. Only it’s not. They don’t come through the door and nobody comes for him. Not today, not tomorrow, not in a few weeks’ time… He is here to stay, and his hopes to see his family again start to fade one day at a time, once the realization he will never go home again sets in. The look in his eyes says it all and it will stay with us forever… It is the look of a permanent wait and a permanent hope that things will get better once more, the family will come back and he will have a reason to live again, his heart will be full again. The only thing that fills a dog’s heart and life is the love for his humans. It is the light of his eyes.
At Animal Rescue Cyprus we see this only too often, what we all call ‘the hardest thing ever’ – to see the look in the eyes of a dog who hasn’t lost hope that he is not here to stay, that he will go home, and how those eyes become sadder and sadder when it doesn’t happen… The look in those eyes will stay with us forever.
Don’t abandon your dogs, they live for you. Don’t abandon your dogs, they breathe for you. Don’t abandon your dogs, their whole world is made of YOU.
