Dog walking

We finally had a dry day and I went to the dog shelter after work. After being sick for over 10 days, then constant rain and a couple of annoying days at work I couldn't wait to go to! Walking the dogs is my cure for (almost) everything. When I was frustrated with the studying for the state exam, when I feel blue, when I lost my grandmother, when I just feel overwhelmed I know where to go. It works every time. And when I am in a good mood, I come home in an even better one! It's not just the walking, it's the cuddling, too:). I was over stressed, with a headache, tense, ... but I came home happy, energized and relaxed!

Our local dog shelter is home to approximately 70 dogs and around 10 kittens and cats. It's a no kill shelter and they try their best to find homes for every dog and cat that lives there. I've been a regular volunteer for 4 years now and I try to go weekly to walk, brush and pet the dogs, to help with the preparing the food and the feeding. My husband does not want to have a dog so walking the shelter dogs is the second best thing. It really is. I know that if I had a dog, I wouldn't be so regular there and those dogs need love and cuddling even more. Just after a few months after I started going there I chose to adopt a dog on distance. That means that the dog still lives at the shelter, but you pay monthly a certain amount of money for his/her food and vet care. The money really goes towards all the dogs, the dog you choose is just to make it more personal. After my first day there I fell in love with PETKA. She was taken from her owner as she was bones only and she was living on a short chain (which is against the law in Slovenia, but a lot of dogs still live on the chain:( ). That's why she kept having puppies and she ate rocks (her teeth are the proof of that) because she obviously wasn't fed enough. One of the puppies was taken away, too. He looked like a St. Bernard mix and he was huge! But adorable and he found a new home in a heartbeat. Petka was immediately sterilized and was very shy at the beginning and she would (and still does) do just anything for food. She was also very playful when she started to relax and she loved to cuddle. She was very thin.

With time she started to forget about her past and she was a bit of a star of the shelter. She also gained weight and became more cheerful. She would check my pockets (where I had the dog biscuits) all the time.

She was adopted 5 months later by a great family. I wanted to know where she ended up and I contacted her new family and we became friends, so I can still visit her!! She is the queen of the house and she is teaching her human family new tricks every day :). They renamed her Iena and discovered, she was a pure bread Dutch Sheppard (not that it matters).

Iena in her new home:

Can you tell she is happy now? We met at the park where she loves to run. She was the first on distance adopted dog, but not the last... but I'll tell you about "my" other dogs in another post.

It would be a lie if I said I didn't have favorites. Apart from my new on distance adopted dog Misha

I love walking Dik, an older German Sheppard.

There's a lot of nice walking ground: