When I was a child I grew up in Germany with two beautiful dogs at my home. I always had a special relationship to animals. I simply love them and try to understand them. Dogs in Germany for example are mostly considered as pets, living together in a regulated relationship with humans and often have a good life iand a home, enough food, attention and love. That was the experience I grew up with.Since I am travelling this picture changed. I had no idea about what it could mean for a dog to live in other cultures. My boyfriend and I have been traveling since over a year in our Van to experience other countries. We explored Italy, several Balkan countries, Turkey and Greece and during our stay in Albania we adopted one poor dog with a bad chance for survival. Since then I dedicated my heart to stray dogs. I started to keep my focus on their life in different cities and societies. I wonder how they can survive out in the streets, how they find food, how to manage to live together with humans and how do people interact with them. There are also different types of stray dogs, some are alone, walking through the streets, searching for food in the trash and a place to sleep next to the busy restaurants, bars and traffic.. Some are living in packs, with an agressive behavior towards anyone walking through their territory. But mostly we met friendly, shy, skinny ones, sometimes hurt and injured or occationally even well fed ones.
We tried to help them at least a bit with some food and attention. I met people working in a dog shelter and understood that there are a lot of problems to try to help so many of them with few resources. It is very sad to see the reality of this but at the same time it is encouraging to see people try to make a difference.