We don’t know anything about him, other than the fact he has one eye, three and a half legs and he is deaf. We were told he was 12 years old, however no one will know for sure. He was a stray – probably abandoned and described as being in a ‘lamentable state’. However I think he is in pretty good health and he seems fit and healthy, so I think the lady who had fostered him must have done a good job. He’s obviously been hit in the past as he ‘falls over’ and cowers when he sees Ian’s hand. He doesn’t seem to do it with me. We’re not sure also if that is because his vision isn’t that great in his remaining eye.
We don’t know about his leg, other than he has a little stump (back leg right side). The skin has grown over and it is hardened into a little pad. It doesn’t affect him. He runs on three legs, but walks on all four with a limp. When he stands he tucks his bad leg over his good leg for support. I can’t work out where the leg has been amputated. It could be at the knee, but the leg seems too long for that, which might mean it is not in the joint at the top. None of the joints in his stumpy leg flex, which is why I thought it might be amputated at the knee.
He’s also missing most of his tail.
He has impressed us with his friendliness. A little too friendly towards Bob, but hopefully that will stop as he settles in. He’s already bonded with Henry and they’ve been playing. He’s wearing a jacket in the photos as he had a very long and matted coat and the lady who was fostering him and trimmed him and was worried he would be cold. She bought the coat for him specially so, although it is very warm here now, we popped it back on again so she could see him in his new home wearing his coat.
When we bought him home he ran straight to the gate to the patio and started to wag his little stump, rather than hide or bark angrily. I’m not really surprised as it is a similar situation to Herbie (without being smuggled out of the Perrera). A lady who works for a animal charity took him from the pound into her home as she knew he would not survive in the pound. And I really don’t think, with all the hundreds of dogs that are in pounds waiting euthanasia, that people will go to that effort unless it is a really nice little dog – they can’t possibly save them all. He would be pretty much unadoptable, given his age and lack of eye etc, when there are so many ‘fit’ and young stray dogs that are looking for homes. So the lady that fostered him obviously was happy to have him for the long run – although as it happened we were in touch with her almost straight away.
We had to go quite a long way to get him. It was my fault as I hadn’t realised there are two places with similar names, and I had thought that it was Palencia he was at, not Placencia. It was a lovely day and it was great to see some more of Spain – marred by the fact we were both expecting to break down and wondering whether we’d break down close to a train station. We didn’t break down and happily the car stood up well. We saw snow topped mountains, and the skiing stations in north Extremadura, which we hadn’t really expected to see.
We’ve been talking about whether we could set up a refuge and save more special need animals. Money would be the biggest problem as we’d need to be able to afford to care for them properly. We could set up a charity so we could fund raise, however I’m not sure that now is the right time to be thinking of something like this, particularly given that animal welfare is such a low priority in Spain even outside of a recession.