By Hania Witerek

It was night. The thermometer outside my window showed – 28 degrees Celsius. I was in my home, at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, where I came only for a short winter break. I knew that in a close neighborhood, an old woman lived. I knew she had a dog. His kennel was a wooden box full of holes. I couldn’t sleep that freezing night, I was thinking about that dog.

In the early morning, I went there with some food. I called the dog, unsure whether I could approach his kennel. He wasn’t moving. I knew he was inside the box. I knocked on the owner’s door and asked if I could insulate her dog’s kennel. She was amused by the idea and answered cheerfully “Of course, do it!” During our conversation, the dog appeared. I could see it was an old dog. He was skinny. I gave him the food I brought. I felt it was a friendly dog.

It took me several hours to insulate that kennel. During all those hours the dog just waited next to me as if he could feel it was for his sake. Inside the kennel, there was an awfully strong smell of urine…outside, the circle of the dog's poos orbiting the wooden box at the length of the short chain. All the poos were spotted white. Frozen dead worms. I didn’t have much time to help him, I was going back abroad where I lived at that time. But I gave him the worm pills and I fed him twice a day for the time I was there. The owner didn’t agree that I look for another place for him. When I went there for the last time with food, he was trembling, as if he knew.

My husband (Marek, in the picture walking with Bury) and I moved to our Subcarpathian house after about a year or so…the dog was still there. We went there every day. The owner gave us consent to take him for regular walks and to feed him. And we did. But she didn’t want to give

him away to us. Because, as she stated, “He was still barking”. The dog couldn’t walk properly. His paws were not used to walking, they were like plasticine paws, so weak. When he fell, he couldn’t get up, we needed to help him. But he just wanted to walk, and walk, and walk. He was pulling the leash on his plasticine paws and he never had enough. When we went there with food, he just wanted to go. Food after that. “Just let’s go,

please”, he begged us. His days became a waiting time. He waited for his walks. He was staring endlessly in the direction where we were coming from. And waited. We could feel it. We called him Bury. He didn’t have any name for 14 years. The owner approached him with a stick and put a dirty bucket with soaked mouldy bread in it. Bury means ‘drab’ as he resembled a wolf. His wolfish thick fur saved him on freezing nights during many long Subcarpathian winters. But he didn’t have any

protection from the sun in summer. Eventually, after a few months of negotiations with the woman, Bury came to us.

He was supposed to be “a cat killer” and we have three kittens

at home. So, Bury went to an outdoor pen. But he wanted to

come to us. He was looking at the home and barking all days

long asking us to take him in. He was deaf, so we needed to find some ways to communicate with him. But he wasn’t interested in any communication, he just wanted to walk. After 14 lonely years, he was kind of autistic, and didn’t know how to interact with us. We found out that his copying mechanism was sleep. He fell asleep so deeply that it was difficult to wake him up. One day I thought he died, I just couldn’t get him to wake up. This was probably what he was doing for 14 years in order not to go mad.

After a few months, we had him at home, with the kittens. He understood that the only way for him to be at home was to accept them and he did. He learned to enjoy interactions with us. It was so moving when we came back home after 10 hours of absence and he started running around us in circles, jumping and barking with the utmost joy. He managed to get out of his autism and open his heart to us humans. He admired the warmth and food. But for the whole time he spent with us, he loved walks the most. He truly cherished every second of his new life and he didn’t want to go at the age of 17 when his heart failed. I will never forget when he looked into my eyes and licked my palm when he was leaving us.

Now when it is cold or very hot or on endlessly long rainy days,

I think about Bury and 14 years of his life spent on that short metal chain in that wooden leaky box, which didn’t protect him from external conditions, and which was too small for him. He was the most beautiful, the bravest, the sweetest soul.

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