There are so many dog destinies to tell you about that there is never time to say more about the Bogrov dogs’ best friends – the volunteers. If you have never visited the shelter in the weekend, you probably can’t imagine the warm, caring people of different age and background who got together to help socialize the shelter dogs, giving them their few happy moments outside the “prison” every week, letting them know that however long the wait might be – good things are ahead…
With 500 dogs and 12 people on staff at the shelter, as you can imagine we can do too little for every dog’s need of variety and TLC. Running full speed to provide for the food, treatments, shelter and hygiene for our 500 misfits, we can hardly even find the 10 minutes we need in a day to go round our most favorite buddies in their own cages. So our dogs are really counting on the volunteers.
We’ve told you about the Senior Volunteers – a group of people who have now 3 years been organizing the weekend walks in a way that there always is at least one of them to bring dogs out of the building cage by cage, give them to suitable walkers and monitor the process.
This time we would like to tell you about a person who is not so much a part of the dog-walking group, a volunteer more involved in the cuddling process – Martha.
Every Saturday at noon, Martha comes to the shelter, carrying a bucked of chicken noodles. The bucket is not intended for the babies or some cute buddy – it is the special Saturday treat for the dogs at the Old dog nursery, and also for Bruce – our grumpy Argentinian.
Martha’s smile never leaves her face. Many people often pity us for all the pain and suffering we see, but they are forgetting that we are have the privilege to meet some of the nicest people in Bulgaria and that brings things to a whole other level.
Some time ago the shelter admitted 2 dogs from Martha’s street – Rijko and Valcho. Valcho is now gone and Rijko is still with us. This is how the friendship between Martha and the oldies in the Nursery began. Martha has a few dogs at her summer house which is right next to our wonderful Jean-Luc and Nathaly, the couple who adopted Sivcho and Bear! Nice people tend to stick together, it’s a common truth.
And please, don’t think that we let anyone bring home-made food to our animals. Martha is one of us, it is like we have cooked for the dogs ourselves. As she likes to put it – I am at home here!