I will always treasure the Autumn 1999 copy of the
Greece Animal Rescue (GAR) newsletter where Vesna wrote about saving Ruby from a concentration camp, typical of many a demented animal collector's possessions in Greece. I have since learned from Vesna that Ruby was the last dog to get out alive from that Hell Hole. What a special moment that was.
I had not known about GAR at that time and acquired that newsletter many years later. But I happened to be in Greece in September 1999 to speak at a symposium held in Marathon. I chose to go, before the meeting, to see Knossos in Crete and it was there, in Heraklion, that I first noticed the swarms of stray dogs, all skin and bone, some one had to step over, dying right under one's feet on the sidewalk. It was horrible. A couple of young backpackers had sat down to rest and several dogs had seated themselves around them, looking at them, patiently expecting love, belonging, and maybe some food. It was heartbreaking.
At the numerous restaurants in the square cats would be patiently sitting under the tables for handouts. I was constantly handing bits of fish down to them as I chewed and separated out the bones. When in Marathon I saw it was the same story and when the conference delegates sat at outdoor tables under the stars to dine well, again groups of dogs, of all types and sizes, sat patiently by, waiting for a handout. One near me had a withered leg, likely never treated after being hit by a car. One had scabs all over, but all of them were so calm and attentive, and hopeful. And so grateful for a small tidbit from the table. I was very disturbed by all this and was never the same again.
The following summer I ran across Dianne Aldan, who had a small table at the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto. She had posters with pictures of the horrors of the plight of dogs in Greece and her sign read "Greek Animal Rescue." As the readers know Dianne represented GAR in Toronto. I could not believe that there was a movement like this, so far away from the source of the horrors. Naturally I became a great fan and started to get the GAR newsletter.
It was not long after that that the story of Bonzo arose (
http://www.greekanimalrescue.com/bonzo1.htm), and it makes one bash one's head against the wall to imagine such brainless cruelty in Greece. Soon I was off again to Europe to another meeting, so I made a point of dropping in to see Bonzo while he was in quarantine in London awaiting his surgery. I have since met Vesna and Paul several times. Vesna had put together a list of dogs for adoption from the shelter near Athens, each with a little biography next to their pictures. Dianne had this list, of several pages, with about 40 dogs described. I always dropped by Dianne's table every Saturday at the market. Although I would have liked to have a dog I considered myself much too busy. One day Dianne told me that a couple had just dropped by and were interested in adopting a dog from her list. They had chosen Ruby and Ruby was eventually shipped over in October 2001, the first GAR dog to come to Canada.
Apparently within a short time Ruby was not thriving, she was losing her hair and getting lethargic. Dianne asked me to visit Ruby and her adopters and all I could say was that Ruby should be given raw foods, and tons of vitamins and other essential nutrients, as the dry kibble she was getting would have been deficient in what was needed. Manufacturers do not put the essential fatty acids into kibble as these are the polyunsaturated fats and quickly go rancid (oxidize) and smell like paint; both the dog and purchaser can tell. A dog's coat and hair needs lots of good fatty acids and raw foods which would provide more nutrients. But the new owners of Ruby had a new baby too so they were not going to cook for the dog. If their other dogs (two males, which is why they wanted a female) were getting by on kibble, then Ruby should too. But I say kibble is dead food; you are what you eat! Of course it is gourmet food for strays in Greece but it would not reverse a serious disease.
During the following year Dianne, so conscientious about checking up on Ruby, was so concerned at her lack of thriving she asked me again to accompany her, but my interference, suggesting dietary changes, began to irritate the owners I think. As I found out later there existed a letter in beautiful handwriting from a vet in Greece, who had written about Ruby as having "lupus erythematosus," which is an autoimmune disease. You can readily get an autoimmune disease after vaccinations if your state of health is weak and the nutrition is not optimum. Autoimmune diseases display an imbalance of certain types of T lymphocyte. One type carries out the nasty functions of the immune system which are allergies and autoimmune attack, but this type is not normally dominant. When the beneficial type is exhausted the nasty type dominates and the conventional treatment is to give corticosteroids to suppress the dominant type, but that is so damaging to all types.
In February 2003 Dianne reported to me that Ruby's vet had started, out of desperation, to give steroids. It was then I offered to take Ruby temporarily to get rid of this "lupus" the safe way, and then give her back. The owners agreed. I warned that this would take months as it is nature which does the real healing; artificial steroids only kill symptoms to pretend that the problem has gone away, but they are so destructive as they cause atrophy of everything.
To rebalance the lymphocytes of the immune system I gave Ruby plant sterols, pumpkin seed butter and every vitamin and mineral in the collection, as well as preparing other raw foods. I also consulted a naturopathic veterinarian who suggested
nux vomica, which helped eliminate waste products efficiently considering that skin and kidney have those functions. In lupus kidney can be damaged as well as skin, both organs of elimination.
In June of 03 Ruby had grown a beautiful coat of hair, had lost the accumulated fat and was full of beans. Her "lupus" had disappeared. The owners were thrilled and reported that "Ruby jumped into the back of the wagon, she never jumped that high before." But two months later I got an email saying her hair had turned dull and thin again and she was lethargic, it had started up again. Naturally, it would on just kibble. So Dianne convinced the owners to surrender Ruby back to the charity and I signed to adopt Ruby at the same time. It was understood that whenever I had to go away to a meeting Ruby could board with her old friends until my return.
So that is how Ruby became my dog and she again overcame her lupus. Her little biography on the adoption list always puzzled me. Vesna had written, "She was a skinny and neurotic dog when Niko and I took her from Christina's last summer." I always wondered why "neurotic" was used. Also in the adoption list was a dog called Panemboriki, who looked exactly like Ruby. Vesna once admitted to me that when she visited the shelter she could never distinguish between Panemboriki and Ruby except by the colour of their collars. I wondered if they were litter mates but Vesna denied that on the grounds that they were found long distances apart. There was additionally a dog on the list called Madura who also was not unlike these other two. I will tell you later about these puzzles, but first I will remind readers what was written in the Autumn 99 story of saving Ruby.
Vesna mentioned that Ruby had been at Christina's since the November before, which would have been November 1998. So Ruby was already out and about before being recruited to Christina's, putting her age at perhaps one or two then. Vesna wrote that in the car Ruby was very relaxed as if she was used to travelling in a car. I can certainly agree with that, Ruby was never car sick, yet she always lay sideways in my back seat and put up with the swaying and swerving and stopping and starting; it never bothered her. What I am suggesting is that she may not have been a born-on-the-street stray; she just might have had early car experience with whoever owned her as a puppy. Vesna noted that Ruby was very "calm"; a significant point about her which was always true. But after her first bath it was noticed how skeletal she was, and the most intuitive and ominous observation was then made: Vesna wrote, "None of her organs appeared to be functioning 100% because she was so malnourished." That being the case problems would show up in older age for sure even if in her youth and middle age she flourished.
A few months after Ruby became my permanent companion a lady stopped me in the ravine one day (Toronto is blessed with dozens of ravines through which waterways rushed into the lake years ago) and asked me what kind of dog she is. I said we don't know as she was found stray, but is considered to be a mix of Border Collie and German Shepherd (as a close enough guess).
Nobody involved in Greek animal rescue worries about dog type but as we have read in the newsletters it is not unusual to find purebreds among the strays of Greece. In fact it is remarkable how many purebreds of all types are there, indicating that owners often do buy purebreds as puppies but have no system of recovering them when they wander off with the local packs of strays.
This lady went up and down Ruby for five minutes, studying her minutely and then announced with full confidence, "Well if you don't know, that is a Groenendale!" Well I had heard that name and in my dog book there is a photo of the 4 Belgian Shepherds, all aligned sitting calmly posed for the photo, but only their heads are visible. This lady had her own version, her dog was the Tervueren. And the name of her dog was ... Ruby! That was another ominous moment!
The lady ran a pet shop and showed her Tervueren at the annual shows of the Belgian Shepherd Club of Canada. I then found the website and read the breed description. My Ruby had every last detail of the Groenendale description, even the behavioural characteristics. She would jump up at the door when my hand went for the door knob. She jumped to put her hand on the doorknob too, to indicate that she enjoyed opening the door, she was really eager to go out.
On a website called Belgians.com I had learned that jumping up like a deer, and such pawing, poking and pointing is a Belgian trait. Her being a purebred then explains why Panemboriki was indistinguishable, she was likely a purebred too and Madura, showing a little white beard and moustache could also have been one, as the whitening comes when Groenendales get a bit older, as happened with Ruby, eventually. And the expert told me, "Didn't you know that the Belgians were developed to create the best sheep dogs, so they bred German Shepherds with Collies!" Obviously the Groenendales were from Border Collies and the Tervuerens from the big Collie, the Malinois from Smooth Collies, etc.
I later met a lady in the park who said she has a cousin living in Greece, on an island, and the cousin has a Groenendale there. In later GAR newsletters I have seen more pictures of Groenendales, Titus is the name of a recent one (newsletters 51 and 52). So this breed seems to be rather popular in Greece. Years later I was telling a Swiss colleague of mine I had a Groenendale, and he went ecstatic saying that that breed is so desirable: "In the restaurants they sit so calmly under the table, they don't go after the food, and they don't bark!"
Well, my Ruby was more than desirable. She was really more close to a human companion. She seemed to understand all sorts of things that were going on. I really think she could read my mind. And I think the description of her in her biography as neurotic was really based on an observation that she was interpreting some communication from the caregiver as a pledge of personal love only to find this was not to be permanently so, as she was being mixed in with the whole pack of yard dogs.
I think she thought of herself as special. All the dogs would have been treated this way, but for a highly evolved dog, likely once belonging to someone, her responses to what she interpreted as inconsistent messages were perhaps more noticeable as neurosis. She really went out of her way to communicate, by many different signs. Most often she would paw you, that is, poke you with her hand, as if to say "do this to me," and she even used to talk to me when she got excited.
We would drive all over the city for different walkies as both of us would get rather bored going to the same old parks. There are dozens of interesting parks and ravines here so we had a great choice. As the car neared the location Ruby would know where we were as she recognized the neighbourhood from the previous visit and never forgot, remembering it was such a fun trip last time. She would stand up in the back seat and come over to the window edge behind me and talk in my ear. It was an excited humming sound, which, by opening her mouth at times changed the sound, from whining to moaning and bursts of glee, quite a variety of sounds, but never a bark.
Once on the ground and in the woods she was always so alert. One man once remarked how he never before saw a dog looking up into the trees so much, "so alert," he repeated. Of course Ruby was hoping a squirrel might drop out of a tree just in front of her. She had actually caught and shook a total of three squirrels at different times within the first few months of my having her, but it took three shriekings from me, saying, "Bad, bad," to get the message across that I did not approve. Possibly she might have had to survive on eating such things once. I had made her let go of these prey and they staggered off dragging a non functional leg or so, but they all got away and up a tree for the time being as far as I knew. She also challenged a skunk or two, learning her lesson on that version a little faster, there was no third.
After learning not to grab squirrels she would then merely stalk them, carefully sneaking closer and closer. Her game was to see how close she could come to them before they realized they had better get up a tree. She moved so stealthily, slowly, freezing at the slightest notice and then resuming the crawl. What art she demonstrated would put any well trained pointer to shame. She knew this method pleased me more.
But cats? She hated cats! Luckily she was on leash when we were walking the streets where cats might be, and she tore after them only to be restrained in a few feet. Only in the last year did she practice a more philosophical approach to cats, but maybe it was her aging holding her back, she was probably 11 or 12, which in human terms might be around 80 years old. She used to bark and tug when seeing cats but in recent months stopped, stared a long silent time and gave only one symbolic woof just to show her superiority. I was always admonishing, "You have to be nice to pussy cat." This lesson took longer to learn than the squirrel catching, perhaps because I never got upset enough; no need to.
When I was 14 I had a beagle who would sing out in full voice when I played a discord on the piano, like B and C together. When Ruby first came into my house I set up her big cushion and blankets underneath the piano, a place where there was a sort of roof over her den. I did not expect a sheep dog to burst into song like a hound, but the first time I ever played in her presence I did indeed hear a singalong. It was brief but definitely a melodic vocalization from her, stimulated by some resonance with what I played.
My favourite piece was Debussy's
Arabesque Number One, a piece I learned 40 years ago and would always play first when I sat down, sort of as a warm up. It is very likely the first piece I ever played in front of Ruby and I must have played it many times for her among other pieces. Over the years I could sometimes trigger her to sing a bit, but it was not a predictable happening, and when she did it, it did not last long.
Last Christmas we discovered she had a bladder infection, but the blood urea was extremely high too indicating the kidney was affected. After antibiotics she had a rather good summer but in August began to vomit often and eventually stopped eating. The vet determined that it was terminal kidney failure. It is easier to reverse cancer than to grow new kidney tissue, and we went through a course of giving her subcutaneous fluids for more than two weeks, like getting dialysis treatments, but it was not helping, and it was clear she was also in great pain, which was the main reason for sending her off with the Angels where she belongs.
At this sad ending I thanked Ruby, then, barely seeing through my tears, I left the vet's office and got back in the car, turned on the ignition and the radio came back on. It then played Debussy's
Arabesque Number One, Ruby's last little message to me.
More written by Dr. Brian Sparkes:
http://www.tailsfromgreecerescue.com/id48.html
Reprinted with permission from Dianne Aldan of Greece Animal Rescue.
http://www.tailsfromgreecerescue.com